Silent Coup [Paperback ed.] 1634240537, 9781634240536

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SILENT COUP

Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin

SILENT COUP THEREM0VAL0FAPRE8IDENT

St. Martin's Press

New York

SILENT COUP: THE REMOVAL OF A PRESIDENT. Copyright

©

1991 by

Len Colodny and

Robert Gettlin. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. of this book

may be used

permission except

in the case

reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue,

N.Y. 10010. Design by Glen Edelstein

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Colodny, Len. Silent

coup

:

the removal of a president

Len Colodny and

/

Robert Gettlin. p.

cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 1.

0-312-05156-5

Watergate Affair, 1972-1974.

Milhous), 1913-

E860.C635

.

No

part

manner whatsoever without written of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or

or reproduced in any

I.

Nixon, Richard M. (Richard

2.

Gettlin, Robert.

II.

Title.

1991

364.r32'0973—dc20

90-49208

CIP First Edition:

10

9

8

7

6

June 1991 5

4

3

2

1

New

York,

DEDICATION—LEN COLODNY For Sandy Colodny

Sherry and Jerry Hollis

John and Robin Colodny Ethel Colodny and in memory of Sam Colodny and Fanny and Seymour Price for their loving support, faith, and values [Bandit]

DEDICATION—ROBERT GETTLIN For Arlene,

Adam,

Alex,

Sunny, Leo, and Esther and in everlasting memory of Shirley Gettlin, Alex and Sylvia Gettlin, Rae Frantz, Joe Goodstein, and Doris Perlstein

.

CONTENTS Acknowledgments

viii

Foreword by Roger Morris

xiii

Book One: Spy Ring 1

Spying on the White House

2.

Carrying the Contraband

3.

The

4.

Nixon Orders

5.

The Wood ward-Haig Connection

3 21 32

Admiral's Confession

47 69

a Burial

91

Book Two: Golden Boy 6.

The President's Private Eye

7.

Sandvvedge Becomes

8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

The The

Bailley (connection

Last Break-In

Ujs Angeles and

A

Walk

in

jVIanila:

The Cover-up

the Park

"The Smoking Gun" Hush iMoney for Hunt

—

15.

Damage Control Action The Pressure Mounts

16.

Confession lime

17.

The Cancer Within

14.

93 111

GEMSTONE

Officer

the Presidency

vi

Begins

123 142 161 173 195 205 215 233 248 260

.

Contents

Book Three:

Exit the President

18.

The Return

19.

Stewart Shakes

Days

277

of Alexander Haig

Up

the White

House

20.

Five

2

22.

The Saturday Night Massacre The Eighteen-and-a-Half-Minute Gap

23.

Moorer-Radford Disinterred

24.

Senator Stennis Holds

25.

The

1

in July

a

Hearing

Real Final Days

Epilogue:

.

.

.

Appendix A:

And Throw Away

vii

the Key

List of Interviewees

279 304 316 337 360 373 390 404

426

441

Appendix B: Welander Confessions

445

Notes

475

Bibliography

487

Index

491

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The

from which Silent Coup was born began a decade ago. At that time we had no interest in Watergate. We were immersed in a story about journaHstic ethics involving one of America's most influential reporters, Bob Wbodward of the Washington Post, and it was about that topic that we hoped to write a book. But when one looks investigation

closelv at

Woodward, we eventually discovered, the

trail

inevitably

and the events that brought down Richard

leads back to Watergate

Nixon.

What turned our

attention was the publication in

November 1984

of Jim Hougan's ground-breaking book, Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA. Hougan accomplished what no other investigator had attempted to do he investigated the events and circumstances of the June 17, 1972, break-in at Democratic headquarters, reporting in scrupulous detail that the accepted version of the crime was riddled

—

with contradictions, flaws, and inaccuracies. Hougan's work was revelatory,

showing that the Watergate story rested upon myths that had

obscured the public's understanding of

Hougan and

it

a

great national calamity.

also raised the first questions about

Woodward's background,

was

this clue that

launched us on the path that led to the writing

oi Silent Coup.

A

first-rate

journalist,

own

Hougan generously shared with

us the

and provided sound advice and whom we have accumulated a serious debt during our half-dozen vears of work on this book. Roger Morris is a scholar and journalist of great intellectual depth whose contribution to our work was immeasurable. As he does in his product of his

unflagging support.

own

critically

He

acclaimed

the larger picture.

an old

investigative efforts is

\\

among

those to

ritings,

Morris constantly inspired us to see

Not only had we uncovered

political story,

but also

a

compelling

startling

tale

new

facts

about the way

in

about

which

power is wielded inside the U.S. government. Morris' firsthand knowledge of the National Security (Council under Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger was invaluable, giving us and thus our readers a deeper

—

viii

—

Acknowledgments understanding of the key players in

this

book.

ix

A man of sensitivity

and

and boundless enthusiasm for our work helped and writing. Len Colodny's childhood friend Benton Becker was initially asked to advise and assist us, even though he had worked with individuals in the Department of Justice and in the Nixon and Ford administrations whose actions we examined. Becker's knowledge of the pathways of government, his tenacity for tracking down a story, and his desire to expose the truth were always at our disposal. He helped direct the search for information, interpreted evidence, and opened doors to wit, Morris' insights

sustain us through years of arduous research

other sources before, in the final months of the project, putting aside his private

law practice to become

a full-fledged collaborator.

We

also

thank Becker's colleague, attorney Peter Collins, and administrative aide Melissa

Hodes

for their assistance,

and acknowledge the help of

Becker's longtime friend Eric Jimenez.

At a critical time in the preparation of the manuscript, we consulted Shachtman, a writer of exceptional talent. The author of a wideranging examination of the entire era. Decade of Shocks, 1963-1974,

Tom

published in 1983, as well as several other books on twentieth-century

American

Shachtman was called upon to help Colodny write Golden Boy section of this book, and, later, to work with Gettlin on revision and completion of the entire manuscript. Shachtman is a masterful storyteller, and without his enormous contrihistory,

eight chapters in the

bution

we might

still

Phil Stanford,

be typing away.

who

followed up on Hougan's findings, provided

crucial assistance that helped us discover the reason for the Watergate

break-ins.

"Mo

It

was Stanford

who

first

found the

Biner" and attorney Phillip Bailley.

that led to our writing of

And

what the reader

"Bailley connection" to Watergate.

Now

a

it

will

critical link

was

between

his basic research

come

to

know

as the

columnist for The Oregonian

Oregon, Stanford graciously provided advice and help over the past two years. Nat Sobel served as much more than our literary agent. He assisted in the careful preparation of our proposal, guided us through the tricky waters of the publishing world, and contributed greatly to the strengthening of our manuscript. He has been an adviser and friend, providing at the appropriate times both sound criticism and nourishing praise. We also thank others at Sobel Weber Associates, especially Craig Holden and Wanda Cuevas. We can not imagine a publisher demonstrating a more unswerving commitment to a book than St. Martin's Press has shown with Silent Coup. We are deeply indebted to our skillful and diligent editor, George in Portland,

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

X

Witte, and to the always-encouraging St. Martin's President,

Roy

Gainsburg, for their dedication to quahty, their remarkable patience, and for allowing us to build the book even as we were writing. General

Counsel David Kaye and Associate General Counsel Lotte Meister made tremendous contributions, spending many painstaking hours meticulously reviewing our research and helping to sharpen the story that appears in the following pages. We thank Pat Modigliani for her careful transcription of a particularly important section of the book.

We owe special who believed in

thanks to

St.

Martin's Chairman

Tom McCormack,

from day one, who shepherded it through who periods, and pushed for the highest quality in our work. trving Before his death at the end of 1988, John Mitchell was an especially valuable source. Until we contacted him, Mitchell had said little about his association with Richard Nixon or his involvement in Watergate. But in more than three years of dealings with Mitchell we found him to be forthright, sometimes brutally frank, about that often painful period of his life. Mitchell provided access to other sources, and after his death many of them continued to assist us. We acknowledge the help of Jack Brennan, Steve Bull, Dwight Chapin, Harry Flemming, Steve King, Dick Kleindienst, Jerris Leonard, Bob Mardian, Powell Moore, Sandy Perk, and Lee (Jablonski) Uhre. Special thanks goes to John Mitchell's daughter, Marty Mitchell, and to his longtime companion, Mary Gore Deane. Bob Sherrill, one of the country's great investigative writers, gave us early encouragement and criticism that helped launch our research and then kept us going long before we knew we would produce Silent Coup. We also thank his wife, Mary, for her continuing kindness. Philip Simon, a close and longtime friend of Bob Gettlin, tracked down crucial documents for us from the government of the Philippines. We thank Simon, who lives in Manila, for his extraordinary ingenuity and persistence, as well as his friend, Evelyn Villa, for her own diligent this project

efforts in the securing of this information.

During years of investigation and research, we found the Nixon Presidential xVlaterials Staff, an in Alexandria,

arm of

the National Archives, located

Virginia, to be an invaluable resource.

We

gratefully

acknowledge those staff members who assisted us. Supervisory Archivist Dr. Byron A. Parham deserves special recognition for his professionalism, thoroughness, and ever-present good humor. Audiovisual archivist Dick McNeill and photo specialist Mary Young provided materials from which we selected a number of photographs for the book.

At the Center for Legislative Archives, also part of the National

— Acknowledgments

xi

Archives, Robert Coren, chief of the reference branch, his predecessor,

David Kepley, and archivist Rodney Ross were extremely helpful over the years in providing and interpreting the files of the Senate Watergate committee. Similarly, David Paynter of the archives' textual reference division, and his predecessor Steve Tilley, provided documents from the files of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force and tracked down those that had been difficult to find. In sum, all of the professionals with whom we dealt at the various archives branches contributed greatly to our research efforts. Finally, in the

we

are grateful to each person

appendix of

this

book

(as well as

on the interview

list

located

those few whose names are not

Our debt

to

them

is

substantial, for their separate stories enabled us to uncover

many

of

listed)

for their cooperation over the years.

the hidden truths of Watergate.

Only by

stripping away historical

falsehoods and misconceptions can the United States, or any nation,

hope

to avoid repeating

A

its

mistakes and secure a brighter future.

Personal Acknowledgment by

Len Colodny

is one person who truly is a hero Sandy Colodny. Without her there would have been no Silent Coup. Through the early 1980s, in turmoil and strife, Sandy stood by me, her faith and love sustaining me. When necessary, her financial support kept us going. No individual deserves more credit, and there is no one I love and respect more than her. I owe Sandy a lot and so, too, does any American who might regard this book as contributing to

In a book with few heroes, there

my

wife,

an understanding of our history. My children. Sherry and John, went through some very difficult and trying periods of my life and were rocks of love and support, and have been a source of great pride to me. They, too, played an important

making of this book. Their spouses, Jerry and Robin, have given me love and friendship. My late father, Sam Colodny, instilled in me by word and by deed a strong set of values, stressing the importance of honesty and integrity over the all-too-common pursuits of money and power. He loved the that the give and take of politics, but he understood its dark side bottom line for most politicians is personal gain and getting reelected. My father had great insights into human nature, and a sense of humor second to none. It was his legacy that enabled me to uncover the truths role in the

—

found

in Silent Coup.

Although we

left

Washington, D.C.,

in 1984,

we have

very special

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xii

friends there

who

stuck with us through the tough times.

My

love

and

thanks go out to Sue and Dick, PhylHs and Teddy, Audrey and Joe, David and Rosemary, Ed and Sue, John and Maryann, Marion and

memorium, Don. who welcomed us and made our new home a joy. Many thanks to Kay and Pete, Alma and Ernie, George and Joan, Carol and Richard, Charlotte and Al, Kathy and Hugh, In

Leila and Dan, and Jo and, Tampa, there are wonderful

in

friends

and Richard and Betty. least, we acknowledge our old antiwar friends now residing in Maine, Irene and Ben. Bill,

Last but not

A

Personal Acknowledgment by

Bob

Gettlin

is an intensely personal and satisfying experience, arduous than the uninitiated could ever know. one that is far more but This being my first book, I went through many trials, learned many lessons. That I survived the process is due in great measure to the unbending love and support of my wife, Arlene Gettlin. Her faith and positive outlook were a reassuring beacon during difficult periods, and she constantly shared in the excitement of the project even though I spent many hours away from home doing battle with the word proces-

Writing a book

sor.

My

Adam

and Alex, did not see me as much as they would but when I was around their enthusiasm and love was more

sons,

have liked, sustenance.

Amid

the satisfaction of producing this book,

I

regret that

my

who died in my early childhood, is not able to see its publication. Her memory has been a lifelong source of inspiration. My mother Sunny, who raised me and taught me how to believe in myself, and my father, Leo, who passed on to me a thirst for the study of mother, Shirley,

history, deserve I

am

all

the thanks a son can give.

deeply grateful to

Pennsylvania,

New Jersey,

my

siblings

Illinois,

and

relatives in California,

Massachusetts, and Maryland

have been incredibly supportive over the years, as have

and friends

in California,

my

who

colleagues

Washington, D.C., and Virginia.

Finally, I owe a special debt to my co-author, Len, a man of remarkable strength whose keen intellect and burning desire to pursue

the truth friendship.

kept us on course.

He

has

shown me

the

meaning of

FOREWORD Daniel Boorstin, the eminent historian and Librarian of Congress, said less

well in a

it

work

called Hidden History.

"Our

past

is

only a

little

uncertain than our future," he wrote, "and, like the future,

it is

always changing, always revealing and concealing." Silent

Coup

is

the excavation of

some

hidden history, of

vital

a

national scandal within a scandal, and of a literary-journalistic atrocity

of revealing while concealing.

There are

among

several virtues that

political writing of

our

paced narrative, gripping as

much

era. it

is

make

What

this

book quite remarkable

follows

is

a finely styled, fast-

from so happens to

disturbing. Distinguished

written about Watergate and Richard Nixon,

it

also

be true.

You are about to read the story of

a

coup

d'etat,

events the most dramatic, suspenseful, sinister.

even more ominous, this

is

of

all

political

To make the subject

an American coup, albeit carried out

change) in the United States

The means and methods

(for a

itself.

are appropriate to the setting.

No conspir-

away to some secret command post. No tanks crouch among the tree-shaded streets behind the Capitol. We are witnessing the classically American genus of the coup d'etat, achieved by folly as well as cunning, by commercial calculus and public relations, by both the manipulation of institutions and their own craven abdication, by cold intention and no little inadvertence, and perhaps most essential at no sacrifice of the popular mythology. (A distinguishing mark of the American coup is that it should remain concealed from its victims and ators steal

—

—

history even after

Among

its

several

successful execution.)

dimensions, this book

is

a

portrait of Richard

Milhous Nixon. Of many remarkable United States presidents in this century, he remains in many respects the most intriguing, seemingly the most elusive. He emerges in these pages as a tortured, torturing man of historic paradox. A kind of political prodigy, Mr. Nixon is in many ways a misfit in public life. Widely respected and widely xiii

— FOREWORD

xiv

abhorred, he appears here as a statesman coasting to reelection, yet a poHtician lethally anxious about his place and future.

Most important

he has been strikingly adept at concentrating power and sometimes almost magisterial in its use, yet strangely inept for purposes of the coup,

in

understanding the inner

realities

of government, feebly unable to

cope with the supreme crisis of his own removal. Even those who know well the provenance of Richard Nixon will find in this book an unexpected figure. His rise, it is true, gave premonition of his fall. But no other portrayal has provided us such a

montage of the tottering ruler, the old predator at the would-be visionary, the punitive and the bay. It is this president very much as he was. That he was never seen so clearly at pathetic

gritty, authentic

—

—

the time, viewed through the lens of other ambitions, other reckonings

of power,

is

part of the considerable revelation of Silent Coup.

Yet the following pages are far

more than

the historv of the American presidency

Above

all,

this

politics in the

is

a

book about

a

—though

major contribution to that

a larger reality

would be enough.

of government and

United States.

Mr. Nixon himself has been fond of saying that history if not historians would somehow vindicate him, that most of the first scathing verdicts on his regime have come from those whom he dismisses with that old sneer as "on the left." Like his fitful grasp of governance, his sense of what reallv happened to him turns out to be sadly superficial, and ironic. As Silent Coup shows so compellingly, Watergate was acted out and its early ersatz history dictated, as it were by those of far more reactionary views, and by some far closer to the Oval Office. Nothing, in fact, was quite what it seemed, from spies in gold braid to the manipulation of a presidential pardon, from the chaotic White House cover-up to the matching confusion and concealment of Congress and the prosecutors. Even the famous break-in itself was born of an urge still seedier than party espionage. In a sense, an American president was toppled by the world's oldest profession. Not least and this much Mr. Nixon may yet come to appreciate the regime was replaced because of its policies as well as its squalid politics. However petty the maneuvers, there was grim substance to this coup d'etat. One of its purposes was not only to rid us of an awkward leader and his extra-Constitutional excursions, but in the first instance to check some unwanted statesmanship, and thus to maintain a prescribed course for America and the world. As the hidden history of Watergate unfolds in Silent Coup, there seems little doubt about the base motives of the participants. One is tempted to blame much on power and greed. The Joint Chiefs of Staff

—

—

—

— Foreword and

their agents-in-place

XV

had authority and appropriations

at stake.

Reporters with laggard or uncertain careers, pubhshers hungry for industry sensation and profits, bureaucrats behaving bureaucratically all,

in a way, are recognizable.

There

is

something

fetid in the released

odor, personal aggrandizement, dishonesty, and corruption as old as the Republic. Yet

what became

decisive in the

end was

relatively

modern, the

stunning superficiality of Washington's political culture in this of the American Century.

last half

Events depended upon the absence or

subversion of what the Founders trusted rather hopefully to be the

—the

and Judiciary. Washington's jourwere no more co-opted than their predecessors, and in some ways less so than the snap-brimmed barkers of an earlier era who took their leaks whole from J. Edgar Hoover or flush, backslapping senators. But their chemistry in Watergate was typically banal:

guardians

press, the Congress,

nalists of the 1970s

a

conspiracy of accepted convention, a conjunction of careers, the

arrogance, presumption, and opportunism of an insular capital.

Messrs. Colodny and Gettlin perform no black magic in righting the record.

What

they do

the evidence, almost

all

is

of

a

meticulous and thoughtful weighing of

it

available at the time to enterprising

and investigators, most of whom glided languidly past. It was and has been a cruel hoax to pretend that the most powerful institutions of the media did not have the wherewithal to uncover this story, not to mention the train of putative historians and writers who have rehearsed the fiction since. The result has been an American version of treason of the clerks, nothing less than a reporters, or to subsequent scholars

—

—

Constitutional betrayal of trust.

The implications have been far-reaching. Reputations and fortunes were made. Books and movies were confected. A generation of students stood inspired by discreet fraud. Reaction and machination passed blithely as the legitimate Constitutional process. A government was overthrown not in the clear light of democratic day where its abuses might have compelled its recall anyway but in the shadows of myth and factional intrigue. Public ignorance, democracy's lethal draft, was served and drunk. There was indispensable common ground on which the players met, hunters and prey alike. Each was still in the grip of the great national security myth of postwar America, the whole elaborate construct of power and patriotism, fear and ignorance, that has so manacled governance until, in end-of-the-century America, a sentient public scarcely exists. Silent Coup lists no "military party" of plotting colonels and generals, at least in the crude caricatures in which we

—

—

—

FOREWORD

xvi

usually prefer to view them. But security party, civilian

when

governs

it

it

does reveal

formidable national

a

and uniformed, Republican and Democrat, that

chooses, whenever

it

believes

must.

it

process once again in the wake of the Persian Gulf war

—

(It is

in the

—incredibly

with some of the same techniques and mouthpieces of foisting off a fresh mythology of power and personality.) This book will not rescue Richard Nixon from posterity, not salvage the reputations of his men. Nor will it confirm with its real-life complexity

Nixon's

xVlr.

own demonology

of partisan or ideological

something invaluable for the rest of us. The ultimate price of the coup was to defraud a nation of its past, its one true and common patrimony. Colodny and Gettlin are giving back what was stolen. The revelations here are a coming to terms with what we have been, and thus are becoming an anguishing self-examination of the kind our old rivals are now conducting from Berlin to Moscow, from the Katvn Forest to the graveyards of the Gulag. Hiding history was the common scourge of the Cold War, plaguing winners no less than losers. And from the cost of such national distortion in hypocrisy and political, moral decay, there has been no real escape on either side. The reclaiming of America's democracy, like the birth of other's, begins animus. But in

its

sheer authenticity

it

retrieves

—

w

ith telling

That event

—

a

is

the truth.

why

Silent

Coup

precious omen,

is

not only history, but a fateful current

Boorstin would say, of

remains to be discovered about our past, and

how

"how much

uncertain

is

still

our grip

on the future."

—Roger Morris

It's just

mode

the

way you put

of operation that did

it.

It

him

was

his [Nixon's] personality

and

his

in.

^ohn N.

Mitchell, to the authors

July 1988

BOOK ONE

SPY RING

SPYING

ON THE WHITE HOUSE

ON Charles

Thursday afternoon, December

Edward Radford

left his

house

16,

1971,

at Boiling

Navy Yeoman

Air Force Base on

the edge of Washington, D.C., and steered his blue Datsun toward the

seemed like springtime; the temperature had climbed to a record 74 degrees, and as he passed the Tidal Basin and then crossed the Potomac River Radford could see a few cherry blossoms sprouting on the trees, and joggers running along the Mall near the Lincoln Pentagon.

Memorial.

It

The

lanky, mustachioed twenty-seven-year-old with the

open manner had made the routine commute many times Washington fifteen months earlier, but this was a special trip, one that made Radford too tense to enjoy the balmy weather. A day earlier, the Navy had placed him under virtual house arrest, and he dreaded what was now about to happen. He was on his way to an interrogation by Defense Department investigators who suspected that Radford had leaked classified documents to columnist Jack Anderson. Radford had never liked Washington. He had enlisted in the Navy in 1963, and four years later the Navy had sent him to Defense friendly

since arriving in

SPY RING

4

Intelligence School near the capital. He'd developed a strong dislike of

the citv, and was glad

when

his administrative training ended. In

May

1967, he was posted to the defense attache's office in the United States

Embassy

in

New

Delhi, India.

married the daughter of

He

U.S.

a

liked

Navy

New

Delhi,

officer.

The

eight children were born in India. After three years,

ment

where he met and first two of their

when

the assign-

Radford sought the job of "admiral's writer," a memo writing, and that would make him personal aide to a flag officer; that was the route. Chuck Radford thought, to earning an officer's commission. The Navy agreed to give him such training at a school in Bainbridge, Maryland, to India ended,

post that involved clerical work, dictation, and

and Radford hoped that Northwest, close to

The Navy had prestigious

his

after

own

it

he would land a post in the Pacific

family and that of his in-laws.

other plans for him. In the

and highly

sensitive

summer

of 1970 a

assignment linking the Pentagon and

House opened up, and Radford, third in his class at the "admiral's writer" school, became a leading candidate. Offered the job, he was urged to take it. In the Navy you don't say no very often if you want to get ahead, so he accepted the post. Upon arriving in Washington in September 1970, with his wife Tbni and two children, he went to work in an office that directly served the nation's senior military man, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Radford became the personal aide to Rear Admiral Remthe White

officer, who Thomas H. Moorer. anticommunist who concealed tenacity

brandt C. Robinson, an ambitious and politically savvy served as a top assistant to the chairman, Admiral

Moorer was the and

boss, an ardent

combat beneath a thick Alabama drawl. Yeoman Radford were a two-man team that

a thirst for bureaucratic

x\dmiral Robinson and

ran the Joint Chiefs' liaison office to the National Security Council (NSC). Their assignment didn't amount to much on the organizational chart, but it connected them on one side to the highest reaches of the military, and on the other to the White House and its powerful national security adviser,

Henry A.

Kissinger. Robinson and Radford handled

the flow of classified documents and messages between the Joint Chiefs

and the NSC. Though small in size, under Kissinger the NS(> wielded far more power than the mammoth bureaucracies of the departments of Defense and State, principally because President Richard M. Nixon wanted it that wav. The two-man team was Moorer's eyes and ears at the NSC, and Robinson stressed to his yeoman that his loyalty to Moorer stood above all else. "It was his responsiliility to keep the chairman informed, and was to help him to do this," Radford later testified of his instruction 1

Spying on the White House

5

from Robinson. Though Radford performed all the usual menial tasks of an assistant, from taking dictation to typing, filing, pouring coffee, serving lunch, and arranging Robinson's transportation, the yeoman understood that his main job was to assist Robinson by ensuring that everything they saw and heard inside the White House was promptly passed on to Chairman Moorer. The Robinson-Radford team would begin each morning at the Joint Chiefs' suite on the second floor of the E-Ring of the Pentagon, then drive to their

(EOB)

just

NSC

west of the

to the Pentagon.

376A of the old Executive Office Building White House; later in the day they would return

office,

They

often worked past dark, and usually had long,

grueling schedules that allowed Radford

was

loss

offset

by

his continguity to

little

time for his family. That

power and the intimate

secrets of

the nation's foreign policy. His dedicated service to Robinson, Moorer,

and the Joint Chiefs earned him Robinson's praise and the promise of an officer's commission. Chuck Radford was a sensitive young man, the product of an unusual childhood and a broken home. His father was a Native American, his mother descended from Slavic, Irish, and Jewish ancestors, and Radford had had difficulty gaining acceptance at the places to which his family moved, and at the foster homes to which he had occasionally been sent. Perhaps that was why, from the very outset, Yeoman Radford was enthralled by his new job. "It's a long way from an Indian reservation to a position like that," he remembers. "I thought, my gosh, I've finally broken those ties with my past, and I can really be better than a lot of my cousins and a lot of my family had been. I can finally accomplish something. I even stopped reading newspapers that's how exciting it was because the stuff in the newspapers was boring; they didn't know what they were talking

—

—

about."

The

fall

of 1970,

when Yeoman Radford

took up his post, was a pivotal

time for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From their point of view, the president of the United States was out of control.

On

January 20, 1969, Richard

M. Nixon had become

the thirty-

seventh president of the United States. Earlier, as a private citizen,

Nixon had contemplated ing

new

several historical foreign policy shifts, includ-

relationships with the United States' cold

war adversaries, Vietnam, and an

China and the Soviet Union, an end to the war in attempt to stop bloodshed in the Middle East. Though long regarded as a conservative anticommunist, Nixon actually had a world view that favored diplomacy and arms control over confrontation and a continued

SPY RING

6

arms race. He cultivated a public image of anticommunism because he found it useful, but privately was more flexible in his thinking. His slim electoral victory in 1968, with a margin of only a halfmillion votes, represented a tremendous comeback from defeats in the presidential election of 1960 and in the California gubernatorial race in 1962. As he entered the White House, Nixon was full of bitterness and anger about these past defeats, and about years of perceived slights from others in the political establishment. He believed he had never been treated with the respect that a former vice-president should have received. He viewed the nation's capital as a hostile territory populated by his enemies. "Washington is a city run primarily by Democrats and liberals, dominated by like-minded newspapers and other media," Nixon wrote in his autobiography, RN. He urged his cabinet to replace holdover bureaucrats with "people who believed in what we were trving to do," and insisted they do so quickly, or the old establishment would "sabotage" their intended reforms. What he wanted from these new people was "undivided loyalty." Nixon's need to control his political destiny and to prevent the blunting of his agenda by bureaucrats pushed him toward the establishment of v\ hat was, in effect, a secret government. An intensely private and withdrawn man, almost the opposite of the usual gregarious politician, Nixon often recoiled from social situations and preferred to be closeted with familiar aides or to sit alone with a pad and pen and jot down his own thoughts. "Meeting new people filled him with vague dread, especially if they were in a position to rebuff or contradict him," Henry Kissinger observed of his former chieftain in the first volume of his own memoirs. White House Years. Nixon usually directed his chief of staff H. R. "Bob" Haldeman, his counsel and later domestic adviser John D. I^hrlichman, or his attorney general and close friend John N. Mitchell to carrv out the dirty work of imparting bad news or even

somewhat unpalatable directives to subordinates. Both Nixon and Kissinger saw the government bureaucrats as roadblocks to be circumvented. To Nixon, Congress was under the thumb of the Democrats; the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency were havens for Eastern Establishment liberals who hated him; and the military was full of doctrinaire, inflexible anticommunists. To circumvent them all, Nixon determined to use an agency first established in 1947 that had lain dormant in the Kennedy and Johnson years but was under the complete control of the White House the National Security Council. For a man who loved secrecy, it was perfect. While the statutory members of the NSC were officers

—

of the cabinet, the national security adviser and his staff were presiden-

Spying on the White House

tial

appointees

NSC

who

7

did not have to be confirmed by Congress.

was chartered

as a clearinghouse for

The

information from State, the

Pentagon, and the intelhgence community flowing to the White House, and it could take action quickly. Nixon had seen the NSC work under President

Dwight D. Eisenhower, but then

it

had been balanced by

the power and influence of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Nixon constructed a cabinet that could be ignored or easily manipdepending on the whim of the White House. Generally, the most important cabinet post for an incoming administration is the secretary of state. Nixon appointed to that post William P. Rogers, attorney general under Eisenhower, and a man who had befriended Nixon at a time when he had needed friends, after the gubernatorial ulated,

defeat in 1962. In the opening hours of Rogers' tenure as secretary of state,

Nixon had Kissinger send

letters to

many

leaders of foreign

nations, without advising Rogers or his department that he

show outrage

was doing

at this deliberate slight assisted in

so.

Rogers' refusal to

his

department's emasculation. Rogers' complete eclipse occurred

less

later, when Nixon met with Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin without Rogers present, and told the ambassador that Kissinger would meet regularly with him from then

than a month

on.

As Kissinger

reports in his memoirs,

after

that,

Rogers was

having to do with foreign had been irretrievably set in motion. Items on which Rogers was kept in the dark included the strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) with the Russians that aimed to put a ceiling on nuclear arsenals, the secret negotiations with China and the trip to Peking, and the secret peace talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris.

routinely

left

out of

all

important

initiatives

policy, or informed only after they

Whereas Bill Rogers had no real foreign policy experience, the man selected by Nixon as secretary of defense had considerable experience in military affairs. Melvin R. Laird had spent eight terms as a congressman sitting on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which handled the funding of the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. He understood the military bureaucracy far better than Nixon or Kissinger. He also appears to have understood the way Nixon planned to work, and though he protested being cut out of many decisions, he decided to continue on in his post in an attempt to make his own imprint on winding down the war in Vietnam. Nixon's agreement to let Johnson holdover Richard M. Helms remain as the director of the CIA was among his most astounding appointments. "The two were polar opposites in background," Haldeman wrote in his memoir. The Ends of Power, "Helms the aloof, aristocratic. Eastern elitist; Nixon the poor boy (he never let you forget

SPY RING

8

The appointment was

especially

puzzling in light of Nixon's deep-seated belief that the

CIA had

it)

from

a small California

town."

contributed to his loss in the 1960 election. Back then, Nixon told friends, the

CIA had

played politics with the Bay of Pigs operation,

John Kennedy on

where he was able Nixon did not want to take because it might jeopardize the impending Bay of Pigs invasion; the CIA had also given Kennedy ammunition for his accusations about a briefing candidate

it

to the point

to take a strong anti-Castro stand that

"missile gap" that he exploited in similar fashion.

On

both of these

by the CIA, Nixon believed he had appeared weak or uninformed during the televised debates, which were widely credited with having won Kennedy the election. That the election had turned on a number of factors, not the least among them Nixon's physical appearance on television rather than the content of his remarks, did not prevent Nixon from continuing to believe that the CIA had done him in. Nixon planned to ignore the CIA as much as he could, and where he and his agency could be embarleaving Helms in place rassed became part of the plan. Nixon and Helms thought little of each other; there was at least one near-confrontation between them. According to Nixon's memoirs, when Nixon requested the complete Bay of Pigs files. Helms, after initially balking, turned over what the issues, sabotaged

—

—

president believed to be a sanitized

file.

Nixon's relationships with the senior military officers of the nation

were the most complex of those within the upper echelon. It was impossible to carry out the war in Southeast Asia without cooperation from the Pentagon, and such matters as the secret bombings in Cambodia and the air war against North Vietnamese cities required the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But Kissinger courted individual service chiefs and encouraged them to report directly to him rather than to Secretary Laird. He also, on behalf of the president, requested that the JCS set up a "backchannel" through which he and Nixon could transmit private messages within the government and abroad. Such backchannels were normally operated for the government by the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA), but Nixon wanted to circumvent those intelligence agencies. Using special codes, teletypes, and secure terminals located at the Pentagon and in the White House Situation Room, the president and his national security adviser could send and receive messages to selected American officials and members of foreign governments around the world without alerting the rest of the United States government. This backchannel for transmitting and receiving messages was under the control of the JCS and physically located in the Digital

— Spying on the White House

9

Information Relay Center in the Pentagon basement. Operated under a twenty-four-hour guard and open only to those with the highest security clearances, the center installations

worldwide.

It

was linked

to military

commanders and

allowed senior officers to communicate in

single-copy messages that were not filed or retained and could not be read by others in the government. At banks of code machines, terminals,

and teletypes, technicians would decipher incoming messages

using a card system and then route the information via pneumatic tube to the proper location within the Pentagon. Or it would be sent to

Wing basement of the White One of the most secret links at

compatible equipment located in the West

House, adjacent to Kissinger's

office.

the center was the Navy's SR-1 channel, which Kissinger would use on his first secret trip to the People's

Republic of China because

it

could

Department or the CIA. The secretary

not be monitored by the State of defense normally had access to the Relay Center, but, according to a technician who worked there at the time, in late 1970, the guards at the main doors were given orders

from entering the facility. Kissinger wrote that "extraordinary procedures" were necessary for president who didn't trust his cabinet and wouldn't give cabinet

to prevent Laird or

a

—apparently from the White House

any of

his aides

officers direct orders:

Nixon feared

leaks

and shrank from imposing

determined to achieve unlikely to be crablike,

his

recommended

worked

privily

for the bureaucracy,

discipline.

But he was

purposes; he thus encouraged procedures in textbooks

on public administration,

around existing structures.

It

that,

was demoralizing

which, cut out of the process, reacted by accentu-

ating the independence

and

self-will that

had caused Nixon

to

bypass

it

in the first place.

To the Joint Chiefs, the backchannel and the Kissinger overtures to the service chiefs provided the military with special access to the

commander

in chief,

engaged

a

in

a

war that

wondrous thing at a time when they were was not being won. Yet these backchannel

operations also provided the chiefs with indelible evidence that the president was circumventing other officials in the government, and was

probably doing the same to them.

The Pentagon

brass faced a dilemma.

On

the one hand, they

approved of the president's and Kissinger's readiness to use military force in an effort to rejuvenate the United States' efforts to win the grinding, frustrating war in Southeast Asia. They secretly applauded

when

in

March 1969

the president charged them, through backchan-

SPY RING

10

with conducting secret bombing missions over neutral Cambodia. These missions would continue for the next fourteen months, and had as their target suspected North Vietnamese and Vietcong "sanctuaries" in that country. But even when the brass was included as a partner in White House machinations used to create a second set of reports to nels,

—

conceal the actual targets of the air strikes, or asked to provide military

—

communications links for secret diplomatic forays the brass was an uneasy partner in the alliance. Military officers sensed that they were merely being used as instruments to further Nixon's own ends; their belief that this was the case was furthered by the events of ensuing months, during which they saw themselves being ignored, cut out, and circumvented on all the important issues the conduct of the war, troop withdrawals, the peace negotiations, and SALT, just to name the most important ones. The members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff watched with rising frustration as the president and the former Harvard profes-

—

—whom

sor

they especially disliked

—exerted

the military bureaucracy by telling the brass

One

of the

men who

Naval Operations Admiral in his 1976

dictatorial control over

how

to run the war.

served on the Joint Chiefs, former Chief of

Elmo

R. Zumwalt, Jr., wrote of the problem

memoir, On Watch. He described

the deliberate, systematic and, unfortunately, extremely successful efforts,

of the President, Henry Kissinger, and a few subordinate

of the inner circle to conceal, sometimes by simple silence,

by

articulate deceit, their real policies about the

most

national security: the strategic arms limitation talks

members

more often

critical

matters of

(SALT) and various

other of the aspects of "detente," the relations between the United States

and

its allies

facts

in

Europe, the resolution of the war in southeast Asia, the

about America's military strength and readiness. Their conceal-

ment and

deceit

gress, the allies,

branch

who had

was practiced against the public, the and even most of the a

officials

press, the

Con-

within the executive

statutory responsibility to provide advice about

matters of national security.

The

Joint Chiefs, the military advisers to the president, consisted

of the chairman, the chiefs of staff of the

Army

and the Air Force, the

commandant. The what was known as the Tank, the windowless room in the Pentagon where the Joint Chiefs of Staff met, grew increasingly desperate through the first years of the Nixon administration, believing that the political side of the United States governing elite was underchief of naval operations, and the Marine Corps

men

in

1

spying on the White House

1

mining the military's legitimate efforts to conduct a war and to keep the country safe from external threats of harm. Admiral Thomas H. Moorer was appointed by Nixon to be chair-

man

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in July of 1970, after a period of

months

in

which he had done the job on

a day-to-day basis

because of

Army General Earle G. Wheeler. A who had survived Pearl Harbor and wore

the illness of his predecessor,

swaggering former aviator

badge of honor, Moorer constantly made reference to that Japanese attack as the reason why the United States must build its war machine and be prepared for a global battle with the communists. Moorer "made no pretense of academic subtlety," Kissinger wrote; that as a

an innocent country boy caught jungle of sharpies." The admiral was known for his tough talk,

rather, "he exaggerated the attitude of in a

Vietnam Moorer stance, Nixon and Kissinger believed they could convince him to carry out certain secret military operations that would be kept from the Pentagon bureaucracy. Upon his elevation, Moorer decided to cooperate with the White House. However, Moorer must have recognized that especially his insistence that the U.S. could

through effective use of

prevail in

still

military might. Because of this

its

Nixon's and Kissinger's penchant for secrecy was resulting in the military being denied the information

war and

to

it

thought

it

needed

to

win the

keep the country safe from the communist threat world-

wide.

Moorer must have

when men

felt

desperate, but desperation

are in the dark,

as the

JCS was

is

often born

in those days.

While

Kissinger and Nixon reassured military and congressional conservatives

about their dealings with the Russians, they told liberals and arms

same conservatives was making progress difficult on SALT, which involved complex formulas to limit warheads, bombers, submarines, and the defensive weapons system called ABM, the antiballistic missile. This strategy of telling each end of the spectrum that the other was at fault left hawks and doves screaming at each other, and Kissinger and Nixon free to do whatever they wanted in the SALT negotiations. The JCS's sense of betrayal intensified during 1970. They felt beleaguered by an unpopular war

control advocates that assuaging these

expend lives and weapons; while the military services took the casualties and the brunt of the public's antipathy, behind the chiefs' backs, Nixon and Kissinger were negotiating away everything for which American and South Vietnamese blood had been spent. To the JCS, the fact that the Nixon-Kissinger secret diplomacy was being conducted to end the war while at the same time White

that

seemed only

to

SPY RING

12

House instructions were in place to escalate the war on the battlefield was tantamount to treason. The backchannel existed, and so did the liaison office that consisted of Admiral Robinson and Yeoman Radford. The office provided a home for the JCS inside the White House and, as Radford later explained, shortly after he arrived at his post in September 1970, JCS Chairman Moorer became the beneficiary of an espionage operation run by Robinson and Radford and directed against President Nixon and National Security Adviser Kissinger.

The

very chaos attendant on Kissinger's effort to control foreign

NSC

empire gave the spy ring breathing room at its birth. During the Kissinger-led expansion, Robinson managed to establish himself and Radford in an office in the EOB from which Robinson was able to remove all the civilians. Now, Robinson could policy and expand his

handle the flood of paperwork between the Pentagon and the lean, all-military operation.

Unseen by

the background, and Robinson liked

it

civilians, the office

NSC

as a

faded into

that way, for he enjoyed the

upon acting behind the scenes. Robinbecame evident shortly after Radford started work at the

intrigue and secrecy attendant son's attitude

The yeoman had innocently told a caller that the admiral uas unavailable because Robinson was then out of the office at a meeting with Kissinger's deputy. Brigadier General Alexander Meigs Haig. When Radford later informed Robinson of the call he was reprimanded and reminded not to reveal Robinson's whereabouts to anyone. If Robinson received a visitor at the office, Radford was not to tell anyone that the person had been there. "He [Robinson] said that if the wrong person found out" about the visitor, "they might think that something was going on." 1 hat was before Radford himself found out what was "going on." The first sign was the removal of the last civilian secretary from the liaison office, who was bitter about losing the job. Admiral Robinson had done his best to make her feel unwanted, for instance by refusing to let her type his most sensitive memos. Chuck Radford liked the secretary, for despite her anger, she even helped Radford learn his duties so he could properly replace her. Radford was able to make friends with the woman he replaced because he had a gift for disarming people and collecting information, traits that served him well as Robinson's aide and that also served Robinson's purposes. The senior officer told the yeoman he must be wary of everyone else, and he must not let himself be pumped for information, especially by Kissinger's NSC civilians who would inevitably try to query him about the JCS. At the same time, Robinson liaison office.

—

spying on the White House

13

and gossip from the and make sure that Robinson "saw or knew about what I saw by bringing him a copy or asking him if he had seen what I had seen. that he expected my loyalty, and that I wasn't to He made it clear speak outside of the office about what I did in the office." Radford attacked the task with gusto, getting to know many people on the EOB staff, "people in the reproduction center and the burn center and in the bookkeeping center. You know, I was everywhere. Always constantly moving and talking." Radford fed back to Robinson the substance of these conversations and was praised, and came to feel he was "pretty well liked." Yeoman Chuck Radford, the straight arrow, was an espionage controller's dream, a barely noticed secretary who traveled easily through NSC staff offices. It wasn't long before he was converted from a passive to an active spy. It happened around the time Radford was taking dictation, a memo to Moorer about a conversation Robinson had had with a defense contractor; as Radford scribbled in shorthand, he mentioned that he had picked up some information on the same subject in conversation with an NSC staffer. Robinson stopped dictating and told Radford never to hold back anything he'd heard, no matter how minor it seemed. Radford understood that he was now to do more than look or listen. That was when he began to steal information actively, taking documents from burn bags, making extra copies in the reproinstructed, Radford should collect information

NSC

.

.

.

duction center, peering over the shoulders of bookkeepers.

yeoman grew more

.

.

.

As

the

adroit at gathering information, he earned ever

from his admiral. "You have to understand," says retired Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque, "that with the military it's 'us versus them.' The Navy in particular. Civilians are all to be feared and distrusted and guarded against. ... So that reading their traffic and taking it out of their burn bags was all considered legitimate. They [the military] saw themselves as beleaguered." LaRocque, who first learned about Radford's activities when pieces of the story broke publicly, deplores the spying, but understands it as an extension of Robinson's personality. Robinson was, LaRocque says, "totally blind-doggedly loyal to Moorer." When Rear Admiral Robert O. Welander replaced Robinson, who was being given a cherished sea command, the praise for Radford

greater praise

—

but the job was still there to be done. From late 1970 Yeoman Radford collected literally thousands of documents from the White House and, while on foreign trips, documents that ranged from private messages between Kissinger and Nixon that

became

fainter

to late 1971,

involved their secret China gambit, to negotiating stances over sensitive

SPY RING

14

European military bases, to closely guarded policy papers put together by Kissinger's staff, to Nixon's strategy and timetables for withdrawing troops from Southeast Asia.

On

Yeoman Chuck Radford read was trouble. Anderson had White House and Defense Department documents

the morning of

December

14, 1971,

Jack Anderson's column and realized

obtained explosive

it

on the Nixon strategy of secret support and a "tilt" to Pakistan in its South Asian border war with India. One of these was a memo on naval ship movements written days earlier by Admiral Welander. Cited in the column were also four more top-secret government memos, and their accumulated weight blew away Nixon's public stance of neutrality in the conflict.

The Anderson column embarrassed Nixon and Kissinger at a time when Nixon was already enraged because the "tilt" as a strategy was After two weeks of fighting, Pakistani forces had been routed by the Indian army and a final surrender was imminent. The Washington Special Action Group (WSAG), a crisis management team of senior bureaucrats established by Kissinger, had met on December 3 and 4, and Anderson had obtained minutes of these meetings. They contained Kissinger's complaint that he was "getting hell every half hour from the president that we are not being tough enough on India. He doesn't failing.

believe we're carrying out his wishes.

Pakistan.

He

feels

everything

He

wants to

we do comes out

tilt

in favor of

otherwise."

The Ander-

son column also revealed that Nixon had sent a naval task force to the

Bay of Bengal, risking

a

"dangerous confrontation" with Soviet vessels

stationed there in support of India.

Nixon and Kissinger were so embarrassed was West Pakistan's president Yahya Khan was involved on the losing side of the conflict. In fact, the "tilt" had been ordered to support Khan, whose army had been inflicting atrocities on tens of thousands of East Pakistani separatists and ordinary citizens in West Pakistan, and whose outrages had induced India to enter and prevail in the conflict. Why support such a butcher? Nixon and Kissinger backed Khan because he had provided the link to the Peking leadership through which the president and Kissinger had negotiated his stunning diplomatic opening to China. To get away from the now-public disparity between his stance of neutrality and his open tilt to Pakistan, Nixon flew to Key Biscayne and sailed aboard his friend Bebe Rebozo's cabin cruiser, the Coco Lobo III. And Kissinger and the Department of Defense issued orders to find and punish whoever had leaked the memos to Anderson. Part of the reason

that

spying on the White House

15

Radford knew he had not been Anderson's source, and planned to say so as he completed his drive to the Pentagon for interrogation

December

16.

Chuck had never discussed

on

the details of his job with

any outsider, not even with his wife, Tbni. Moreover, this incident had blown up just when he thought he was on the verge of getting away from clandestine work. He'd been trying to get a new assignment since Admiral Robinson had gone to sea and been replaced by Welander, His new boss was a tall, studious, career destroyer officer who came reluctantly to the liaison job; to Radford, Welander appeared indecisive and nervous about the work they were called on to do for Chairman Moorer. "He wasn't careful like Robinson," Radford remembers; "He just didn't seem very astute." By the fall of 1971 Radford had begun to seek a transfer and the commission he'd been promised. His fitness reports glowed with praise from both Robinson before he'd left and Welander, as recently as December 1, when the admiral had judged Radford "hardworking and reliable displays initiative and imagination in performance of assigned duties has performed exceptionally well in a unique and demanding assignment." The transfer didn't come, but Radford continued to seek it. Welander didn't assist him in that search, saying a transfer would have to wait because Radford was .

.

.

.

.

.

too important in his present post.

When

Welander read the Anderson column on December

14,

and

before he'd actually talked to Radford, Welander rushed to accuse

Radford of the leak, and did so to an officer to whom he had close ties. General Haig, deputy to Kissinger. Haig called presidential assistant John Ehrlichman, who immediately assigned White House aide David R. Young to investigate the leak. Young was a Kissinger protege who had worked at the NSC and had transferred to Ehrlichman's staff. In July 1971, with Nixon's approval, Ehrlichman had appointed Young and another aide, Egil "Bud" Krogh, Jr., to be codirectors of a new Special Investigations Unit and to investigate the leak of

what became

known as the Pentagon Papers; Daniel J. Ellsberg, the former government analyst accused of leaking the documents, was also targeted for study. With their office in the basement of the EOB, Young and Krogh were later dubbed the Plumbers, because they were assigned to stop news leaks, and because Young had a self-deprecating sense of humor and had placed a sign on the door that read plumber. Krogh and Young had worked closely with Haig on the Pentagon Papers-Ellsberg investigation and on a leak to The New York Times concerning the SALT talks. Thus, when Welander came to him about the Anderson column on December 14, Haig immediately turned to Ehrlichman, the boss of the leak investigators Krogh and Young.

— SPY RING

16

The

top civilian investigator

Donald Stewart, an

man whose

at

W. and earthy former FBI

the Defense Department was

irrepressible, tenacious,

honesty and blunt language often rankled the high-ranking

military officers and senior bureaucrats

who became

the targets of his

probes. Stewart also had been involved in the Pentagon Papers-Ellsberg investigation, as well as that

track

down the

on the

SALT

and had been trying to

leak,

source of eleven other Jack Anderson columns published

between March and May 1971 that contained classified information from the Defense Department. In his job, Stewart often dealt with the department's general counsel, to Secretary

T)

J.

Fred Buzhardt,

who

reported directly

Melvin Laird.

investigate this

new Anderson column Stewart quickly assemRaymond J. Weir, Jr., a

bled a four-man support team that included

polygraph expert from the National Security Agency, the Defense Department's code-breaking and communications arm. Stewart and his support team joined Young from the White House and decided to question

all

officers

and enlisted

men

assigned to the suite of offices in

which Chairman Moorer's staff at the Pentagon worked. Based on Welander's assertion. Chuck Radford was the prime suspect. Welander was outraged; as he told Haig on the morning of the fourteenth, the column "could only have come from my files." He thought so because the Anderson column cited or quoted five documents: 1) a Welander memo to Haig, dated December 10, that detailed the movements of the USS Enterprise carrier task force as it steamed toward the Indian Ocean; 2) the minutes of the December 3 meeting of the Washington Special Action Group; 3) a separate JCS memo on the December 4 WSAG meeting; and 4 and 5) two State Department cables from the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. The presence in the column of his

memo gave Welander the idea that Radford memo (and no other one cited) contained

that

had been the

leaker, for

a phrase that

Anderson

had repeated but misconstrued. Welander had talked of the ships being armed "with Tartar Sam," by which he meant that they carried surfaceto-air missiles (SAMs) that went by the name of Tartars. Anderson had mistaken Tartar Sam for the name of one of the ships. Welander was certain the leaker was Radford, but there was room for doubt. At least five people had seen the "lartar Sam" memo Welander, Radford, Haig, Kissinger, and an aide to Haig. Moreover, the prevalence of photocopying machines in all of their offices argued that far more people might have had copies of the memo. And the other documents cited by Anderson spread the net of suspicion even wider; for instance, the minutes of the December 3 WSAG meeting had been written by a civilian assistant secretary of defense, and the

spying on the White House

17

memo

on the December 4 meeting had been produced by one of later, Welander admitted that about fifty Pentagon officials had access to each of these documents, and ten to both; that many people on the Haig or Kissinger staffs could have copied Welander's memo; and that several persons in the Pentagon could have had access to his files, safes, and the burn bags in which he ordered Radford to place rough drafts of documents. The people who had a clear motivation to make the leak were the Joint Chiefs. On December 10, and without any consultation with Laird or any senior Navy commanders or even a meeting of the NSC Nixon had sent the Enterprise and nine accompanying or of the WSAG warships filled with two thousand combat-ready Marines to the Bay of Bengal. The group was known as Task Group 74. The action outraged the Joint Chiefs, as Admiral Zumwalt reported in his memoir. On Watch. They were especially concerned because in response a Russian task group also moved into the area, making it possible that a confrontation could happen, one about which the Joint Chiefs had little information. "Perhaps the President and Kissinger, both of whom were quite clearly frustrated by their inability to influence events on the subcontinent, impulsively organized TG 74 and sent it on its way in a final effort to show the world that America was not to be taken lightly," Moorer's aides. Questioned

—

—

Zumwalt

The

wrote.

were convinced that Radford had been responsiin December and for those in the spring of 1971. As it turned out, the source for the eleven earlier columns was an Army enlisted man at the time, a communications specialist named Stephen W. Linger, who had worked at the Digital Information Relay Center, the room through which Moorer provided the backchannel to Kissinger and Nixon. Linger insists that he never gave Anderson anything that threatened the lives of U.S. servicemen and never turned over top-secret documents, but that he had given important material to Anderson because he had become disillusioned with the Pentagon and the conduct of the Vietnam War. Linger had nothing to do with the India-Pakistan leak, since he had left the military in March 1971. But he has admitted to making the eleven others to Anderson, which investigators

ble for the leak to

Anderson

revealed the Air Force cloud-seeding

program over Laos, U.S. monitor-

ing of South Vietnamese President Thieu's private conversations, and

Admiral Moorer's receipt of FBI surveillance reports on antiwar and black dissident groups in the U.S. These FBI reports involved domestic political activity and were outside the purview of the chairman of the JCS. Linger handled the reports when they came over the teletypes at the Pentagon Relay Center. "I grew up real fast at the Pentagon,"

SPY RING

18

Linger told us.

"I

saw the government was doing things that were

wrong." But Radford was the prime suspect in the December leak at the time, and not only because of his contiguity to Welander. He had two strikes against him: He had been stationed in India, and he had some social contact with Jack Anderson. The social contact had come about by accident. While attending a Mormon service in New Delhi, Radford and his wife had met Jack Anderson's parents, who were traveling through India en route to Ethiopia. The Andersons needed help with their visas, and Radford, who worked at the embassy, was able to lend a hand. Correspondence and exchanges of Christmas cards followed, and, soon after the Radfords were posted to Washington in the fall of 1970, the elder Andersons, while visiting their son, invited the young couple and their children to the columnist's Bethesda home. It was not until he arrived at the suburban home that Radford realized that the man he was visiting, and to whom the elder Andersons had referred, was the famed investigative reporter. Jack thanked Radford for the help he had given the elder Andersons in India, and his parents spent most of the evening talking to Radford about the Mormon Church and India. Anderson confirms that he hardly talked to the yeoman at all that night, and not at all about journalism or the military. Next day the yeoman told Admiral Robinson where he'd been the previous evening. "Robinson was surprised," Radford told us, and Robinson then called Moorer to report. Word came back from Moorer that Chuck was to keep his job separate from his social activities. Radford recalls, "I felt better for having told him. I wanted to make sure that he could count on my loyalty." After several more months of no contact with the Andersons, Chuck Radford was doing some research on his great-great-grandfather and called Libby Anderson, the columnist's wife and a Mormon, for help with the family genealogy; later, Toni Radford talked on the phone with Libby about how to conduct the research, which is required of Mormons. Then, on December 5, 1971, Jack called to extend an invitation to his parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary in Utah; the Radfords declined, unable to make the trip. A week later, on December 12, Anderson called again and asked the Radfords to come to dinner that very night. Radford thought it odd to get such an invitation on short notice, but he and Tbni met the Andersons at a Chinese restaurant of which Anderson was a part-owner. That dinner two nights before the column appeared would provide investigators with their strongest evidence linking Anderson and Rad-

spying on the White House

19

But Radford said he had no idea of the forthcoming column, and any other aspect of his job at dinner. Moreover, if he had been the source, he surely would not have accepted a dinner invitation from Anderson and then been seen with the famous columnist in such a public way at a time close to the column's release. Anderson denies ever receiving material from Radford. "I got those documents from at least five or six sources," he says. Although even many years after the event he would not name the real sources, he did say that "You don't get these kind of secrets from an enlisted man. You get them from generals and admirals. You don't get them from the little ford.

didn't discuss India or Pakistan or

guys."

On December

14,

when he

read the column, Radford

trouble, and focused, as Welander had,

Sam."

When

to the

EOB,

knew

on the reference

it

was

to "Tartar

he and Welander made their daily ride from the Pentagon the atmosphere in the car was tense and the conversation

brief.

"Radford, did you give

my memo

to Jack

Anderson?" Welander

asked.

"No,

sir, I

didn't," Radford said.

Despite his denial, Radford was ordered to stay

and wait felt

for a call

humiliated.

couldn't control.

from the Navy.

...

I

I felt

helpless."

felt

"I

was under

home

virtual

the next day

house

things were going on around

arrest.

me

that

I I

was that around three in the afternoon of that balmy December 16 he arrived at the Pentagon for interrogation. The event was held in a two-room suite on the second floor of the E-Ring, in a greenwalled office furnished with standard furniture and military pictures. Stewart, chief of Defense's investigative division, and Weir from the NSA were accompanied by Young from the Plumbers and Stewart's assistant Joseph D. Donohue. Immediately on arriving, Radford admitted that he was in a vulnerable position because he had known Anderson for about a year. This information startled the investigators, because no one in the Navy had told them of the relationship, even though Radford just as quickly told them that he had relayed news of his meeting Anderson to his former superior, Admiral Robinson. The investigators called Welander, who said that he had not been apprised of the relationship when he took over the liaison office. Radford insisted that he'd told Welander of the December 12 meeting with Anderson, just as he'd reported his first dinner at Anderson's home to Robinson, Investigator Stewart was upset by Radford's claim of having told Robinson of the first dinner, because earlier in the year^ when he'd been looking into the sources for those earlier Anderson columns, he

So

it

SPY RING

20

had questioned Robinson, and Robinson had never mentioned that his veoman was a social acquaintance of the columnist. Once the initial interrogation concluded on December 16, Stewart asked his immediate superior, D. O. Cooke, to call Robinson in San Diego and ask him about this lapse. Cooke made the call, and Robinson verified Radford's story, even remembering that the columnist had met the yeoman through Anderson's parents. But, as Stewart's investigative report why [Robinson] had not concludes, "It was never made quite clear furnished this information during the [earlier] investigation." A year later, Robinson would tell an investigator that he hadn't told Stewart in early 1971 about the Radford- Anderson acquaintance because he had not been specifically asked if he knew anyone acquainted with the .

.

.

columnist.

That afternoon of December 16, Stewart, Young, and the rest of the team asked Radford to take a polygraph examination about his contacts with Anderson. He was willing to do so, believing he would pass with flying colors. Weir and Radford moved to an adjacent office and the yeoman was strapped to the lie detector. What Radford did not consider, and what the investigators did not know, was that an ancillary question about to be asked while Radford was "on the box" would uncover the deeper and more explosive secrets that Radford knew all too well the extent to which he was spying for the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the president of the United States.

—

CARRYING THE

CONTRABAND

A

polygraph

—no

test is a quiet affair

accusations, the fewest

number of people

bright hghts, no shouted

possible in the room. Stewart

and Young waited outside while expert polygrapher Ray Weir calmly asked Yeoman Radford nine questions. Strapped to the lie detector, the yeoman easily answered those that had to do with Anderson; no, he had not passed classified information to Anderson or to any other member of the press, Radford responded, and the needle didn't jump. It also stayed in the truth zone when he was asked if he'd had unauthorized contact with foreign nationals, or had been involved in espionage against the United States, or had ever taken classified documents home. Then, according to the test report, Weir asked another standard question: "Have you ever furnished classified documents to uncleared persons?"

Radford had felt comfortable talking about Anderson because he'd had nothing to hide, but this question struck to the heart of his job. He believed the question was not a standard one, but, rather, reflected possible knowledge by Stewart's team of his clandestine activities. "I

21

SPY RING

22

remember

Uh-oh, the data I'm taking from Kissinger and somehow been exposed. They caught me." Months earlier, Radford had broken through the rationalization that his job had not been particularly sinister, that it was only a matter of "taking from this branch of the government and giving it to that branch." In that earlier moment of revelation, he had told himself, "Well, no. You're being stupid because this branch [the White House] feeling,

giving to Admiral Welander has

doesn't want that branch [the Joint Chiefs] to have

put him "in

a vise,"

but back then he'd

still

it."

That

realization

considered himself under

Robinson's original junction, "never to speak to anybody," so he'd

remained silent. Now, during the lie detector test, in the split second between the time the question was asked and he had to answer it, he reviewed all these emotions. "I couldn't talk about this, but yet how could I deny it, because [if I did] I'd be lying. I was stuck." So he answered "Yes" to whether he'd ever furnished classified documents to uncleared persons. But he wouldn't give details. Following this admission by Radford, the report reads,

he [Radford] became emotionally disturbed and to continue

no further testing on

was deemed advisable

it

this statement.

He was

interrogated

concerning these reactions, and he stated that he was concerned about his activity in this area

matter.

He

but that he did not

feel free to

discuss this

further advised that the cause of his concern was a very

sensitive operation

which he could not discuss without

direct approval

of Admiral Welander.

As Weir went

into the next

room

to report the surprising nature of

became increaswanted to talk to Admiral Welander before I said wanted to make sure it was all right with him if I

the polygraph results to Stewart and Young, Radford ingly distraught. "I

anything more.

went through

Thus

I

this."

the stage was set for one of those small misinterpretations of

information on which great events sometimes hinge.

"David \bung called me," Welander

recalls,

admitted to everything but he won't go beyond

"and

said,

'Radford has

without Welander was the subject of Radford's admissions and Welander assumed they had to do with Jack Anderson, not with the secret spying Radford had done for the JCS. Wfelander remembers that Radford was put on the telephone and posed the following question: " 'Admiral, they are asking me all about our job at the Pentagon. What should I do?' " Welander, of course, thought

talking to you.' "

What Young

—

did not

tell

a certain point

Carrying the Contraband

23

Radford was guilty of the leak, so he responded, "Chuck, all you can do is tell the truth." Radford took in that instruction and became even more upset. "I started to doubt myself," he later told us. "Was that his [Welander's] voice? Because I was receiving conflicting information and it did not compute. Because I had been told, 'Don't say anything about what you're doing,' and then the same guy is saying, 'Tell them whatever they need to know,' " Radford resolved that conflict on the side of truth and began talking. In the first blush of confession he revealed that he had stolen confidential documents and private correspondence from White House desks, "out" baskets, burn bags, and in his boldest thefts from Henry Kissinger's briefcase. He'd also typed cover memos from Admirals Robinson and Welander that went on top of the stolen papers they conveyed to Chairman Moorer and to Admiral Zumwalt,

—

—

the chief of naval operations.

Though

the questioning had started calmly,

Stewart got into the interrogator.

He

act.

The

beefy former FBI

it

soon escalated

man was

when

an aggressive

urged the yeoman on, and remembers that the inter-

when Radford broke down in was religious. As the polygraph report

rogation had to be stopped several times tears.

The

source of the tears

notes, the "subject advised that he felt very guilty about this, since he

only enjoyed the freedom which permitted this activity because people

He

were certainly contrary to his religious faith and he hoped to obtain absolution through prayer." It was a wrenching experience akin to penance, Radford remembers of that first interview. Once he began to talk, "There was nowhere to draw the line. I just couldn't say 'I did this' and not talk about that. And I didn't want to quit. I wanted to get it off my chest." When he finished, he was drained, hardly able to walk. Stewart, a hardened investigator, was shocked by Radford's story. That evening he talked in guarded terms about it to his wife, who happened to be the personal nurse to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Stewart told her, "This is a goddamned Seven Days in May. We've got the military spying on the president." He was, he recalled to us, "literally shook," and decided that from that moment on, his investigation would concentrate "on the military conspiracy." Though he was a part of the Pentagon bureaucracy, he was "going after the military." Welander quickly realized that he had made a mistake in advising Radford to talk, and the next day tried to stop Stewart from further questioning the yeoman. He reached Radford early the next morning and told him to get an attorney and to stop talking to the investigators. And he directly challenged Stewart's authority to conduct the interrotrusted him.

stated that these thefts

SPY RING

24

gation, telling Stewart that he didn't have the proper clearances,

and

implying that Radford's operation had sanction from the highest levels. "The day after we first interviewed Radford," Stewart recalls, "I get in bright and early and then Welander

madman." Stewart had had advised him to get to shut up and stay out I'd get

whatever

damn

is all

over me.

He was

like a

already learned from Radford that the admiral a lawyer. "I flew off at

of our business.

I

security clearances

told I

Welander and told him that in two minutes

him

needed."

on the matter made by Stewart at the time is consistent with what Stewart told us, and shows for the first time what has not been known before now, that under questioning by Stewart and Donohue, Welander admitted receiving the bootlegged documents. Initially, the "quite defensive" Welander would only discuss the Jack Anderson column, but, braced with the substance of Radford's confession, "he did, however, admit receiving classified documents to which Radford referred," but refused to say more because "he had certain confidential relationships with Dr. Kissinger and General Haig." Despite this partial demurrer, the second link in the clandestine chain had definitely been verified.

The

secret report

Over the course of four interviews and lie detector tests from December 16 to 23, 1971, Yeoman Chuck Radford told his story to Stewart, a library," Radford "uncounted documents just thousands, thousands of documents. The safes [at the Pentagon] were full of the stuff." John Ehrlichman, who was responsible for the White House's investigation of the matter, concurred with Radford's assessment: "Radford would go to the staff secretary's office of the NSC and just wander around and take stuff out of baskets. He would take them out and xerox them and put them back. And that [NSC office] was the clearinghouse. That's where all the paperwork went to be redistributed. [Radford] used that like a cafeteria." Don Stewart adds that Radford had a source in the NSC mail room who was "at the focal point," because this person handled the distribution of classified correspondence, including that to and from Kissinger, and was able to "hand

Young, and the investigators. "We're talking about said to us as he

summarized

—

his pilfering,

Radford." Radford first started the job at the liaison office, he began immediately to follow Robinson's instruction to report on everything. Soon, he was stealing documents. I hen, in December of 1970, Radford was selected for an unusual assignment, as military aide-de-camp to

[originals or copies] to

When

Kissinger's deputy. General Haig,

on

a trip to

Saigon and

Phnom

Penh. Haig and Robinson were friends. Both were high-ranking mili-

Carrying the Contraband

25

hawks who had offices in the White House complex; Radford remembers that sometimes after work the general and the admiral would share drinks and freewheeling conversations. They had worked together under Kissinger's direction in 1969 to draw up the "Duck Hook" plan, a top-secret study on escalation of the war against North Vietnam. Though Robinson participated with the blessing of Admiral Moorer, then chief of naval operations, the effort was carried out secretly in order to keep knowledge of it hidden from Secretary of Defense Laird. By 1970, Kissinger viewed Robinson as a trustworthy staff member as loyal to the NSC as he was to the Pentagon. That fall, tary

Robinson helped draft Nixon's secret warning to the Soviets to keep their missiles out of a disputed Cuban submarine base and, without Kissinger's knowledge, Robinson showed the memo to Zumwalt, who had recently been appointed CNO, even though Kissinger did not want the JCS to see it. Zumwalt asked Robinson why such a delicate matter had been kept away from the JCS, and Robinson replied that Kissinger "did not want any policy discussion on the matter." Haig brought Robinson into a number of highly sensitive NSC operations and therefore at least implicitly, if not explicitly, vouched

—

and allegiance. Haig and Robinson collaborated on the establishment of the military backchannel that to Kissinger for Robinson's discretion

allowed Kissinger to circumvent Laird and Secretary of State Rogers in

communications with foreign governments. Kissinger noted in his memoirs that when they were looking for a way to do this during the February 1971 negotiations over the status of West Berlin, Haig "found a solution" by having Robinson set up the link through a Navy channel. As Radford prepared to accompany Haig on his trip to Southeast Asia, Robinson told him to keep his "eyes and ears" open for information on two subjects of particular interest to the Joint Chiefs, the his

administration's orchestration of the plan for an all-volunteer

army and

the schedule for troop withdrawals from Vietnam.

"So notes as I

I

I

did," Radford recalls, "but

went along.

couldn't absorb

to

it all

know was who

who

they talked

said

to.

.

.

.

The

and keep it,

I

it

factual.

when they

So what

I

went

a litde further [and]

kept

information was so overwhelming that

[gave]

And what Robinson wanted

it, and where they said it, Robinson was grass roots data,

said

feedback."

Amazing though it might sound, the Joint Chiefs had little knowledge about the planned withdrawals of their own troops. "We wondered

who

the hell

is

the son of a bitch

who

is

coming up with the

information" to justify the withdrawals, Welander told us.

"The

chiefs'

viewpoint was being disregarded. If they [Nixon and Kissinger] weren't

26

listening to the chiefs,

SPY RING where were they getting the information

to base

their decisions?" VVelander told us that the Joint Chiefs sought to learn

who was developing the data that refuted the military's own numbers on required troop strength. The admiral's comments underscore the desperate position of the Joint Chiefs, and the reason they went to the extraordinary measure of spying on the White House. In their eyes, it was self-defense. On this first trip with Haig, Radford handled the chores of stenographer, courier, and "baggage boy." Everything from top-secret papers to the general's dirty socks went through his hands. Beyond his primary assignment from Robinson, there were other instructions for the yeoman: to report on agreements in the making with South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, and progress in Haig's talks with Cambodian Premier Lon Nol. Robinson had asked Radford for information. Radford, "as cunning as I could be," rationalized, "Well, what's information? Is it written, is it verbal, what is it? So whatever I typed for General Haig I made a carbon copy of. In one case, I couldn't save the carbon copy so I saved the carbons. It worked just as well. If I was asked to put [copies] in the burn bag, well, I would put it in the burn bag, but I made a xerox copy of it first." This was a bold, even reckless course for Radford to pursue, one that led to having to carry back from Southeast Asia a huge government envelope overflowing with hundreds of pages of documents dealing with troop withdrawals, movements, and the eventual winding down of the war. The booty also included information on a more legitimate problem that was vexing the Joint Chiefs, how the Vietcong seemed to learn in advance of the bombing raids what arms caches and base camps the Americans had targeted; often, by the time the bombers made their runs, previously identified targets had been abandoned. Radford brought back information on how American security had been breached on this matter. The bulging envelope also contained private communications and cables that would allow insight into the thinking at high levels. When Robinson saw what the yeoman had brought, he was stunned and overjoyed. Ibgether, he and Radford spent hours preparing the documents for transmission to Admiral Moorer. Radford felt exalted at Robinson's excitement, expressed in the way Robinson would light up his pipe, puff it "like a steam engine," and pace around the room firing questions as to how and where Radford had obtained the material, so they could put the document into context for Moorer. "I gave him much more than he could ever get on his own," Radford recalls. 1 he reception by Robinson helped him shake the doubts of his childhood. "I thought, I scored! I'm in now. He likes me. You know, it .

.

.

Carrying the Contraband

27

good to be accepted by the guy you work for. Ever since I was a child it's been important to me to be accepted, and I always worked extra hard to be accepted. Especially by the white community. ... To be accepted by an Anglo with very high standing in the government and who was dynamic and going places I felt really good about that. I really felt like I was assimilating." After that, Radford had an open license to purloin documents, and the secure feeling that his superiors wanted him to do so and prized him for his busy hands as well as for his "eyes and ears." Robinson's appetite for the stolen material increased, and as Radford grew more confident of his ability to obtain material, he widened the compass of his search. He established a network of secretaries and clerks throughout the NSC complex, people from whom he could steal documents. If they had a piece of mail to deliver, he'd offer to carry it for them; if they had documents to be photocopied, he'd handle that chore for them. It was as easy as taking candy from a baby he'd go to the copying machine, make his duplicates, keep the duplicates for Robinson and Moorer, and then deliver the originals and expected copies to feels

.

.

.

—

—

the intended party.

To guard against discovery of the pilfering operation, Robinson told Radford to "sanitize" the papers by cutting off the letterhead and other identification symbols, and then to photocopy the excised document with a white piece of paper behind it. The idea may have come from a practice of Admiral Moorer's. According to Admiral Zumwalt's memoir, Moorer told him of an NSC meeting at which a senior civilian Defense official had glanced at Moorer's briefing book and had seen a document with a White House letterhead that had not been sent to Secretary Laird's office. "From then on," Zumwalt wrote, "the Robinson-Welander liaison

NSC

photocopying

made

office

documents

On the first trip with Robinson had been

sure to cut off the letterhead before

Moorer."

for

Haig, Radford recalls, he was selective because

specific

about what to look

for; later,

he

just

took

everything:

If

it

became

...

all

available,

out.

minute. ...

I

It

made

I

took

was coming

were so delighted

waiting around an it.

[The

activity of stealing]

empty

it.

in so fast that

to have the data

were even more delighted.

on

it.

a career out of

It

was

.

.

.

like

became intense

Everyday. Constantly. Every they couldn't digest

and each time

I

it.

They

came back they

they were a bunch of buzzards

carcass, waiting to

jump

in

and

start biting

— SPY RING

28

The

report of the polygraph test supplies a

of the types of

list

documents Radford sent through to Moorer: contingency plans, political agreements, troop movements, behind-the-scenes politics, and security conferences going on between the U.S. government and foreign governments. Radford later told investigators he also had taken memoranda of conversations of private, top-level meetings, cables, secret channel papers involving negotiations with foreign governments, memos regarding internal White House political dealings, and defense

budget papers. secrets in the

The yeoman was White House. He

some of the most sensitive seeing documents discussing

privy to recalls

the possibility of assassinating Chilean President Salvador Allende;

documents on the government's spy satellite network; on the CIAHoward Hughes project to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. "There was so much [that] I would see and say to myself, My gosh, you're kidding me! I would grab it. They're doing what to the people in Britain? I grabbed it. They're doing what with the people in Israel? I grabbed it." .

.

.

Radford knew that his actions gave his superiors "an excellent Knowledge is overview of what was going on in the White House. .

power and the more they knew about the W^hite House's operations] the

all

.

.

this peripheral data [regarding

more they were

able to circumvent

and to maneuver and to accomplish their own ends." And what, we asked him, did he think those ends were? He told us, "Well, bringing Nixon down. Really, getting rid of Kissinger Kissinger was a real

monkey wrench

in things."

Radford himself never passed documents directly to Moorer; that task was reserved for Robinson and Welander, and occasionally for Moorer's senior aides at the Pentagon, such as Captain Arthur K. Knoizen, who once told Radford to "keep up the good work." Radford

would aide

later testify that that

who

sentiment was echoed by another Moorer

he believes saw the documents. Captain Harry D. Train

II;

"You do good work," he told the yeoman. Admiral Welander acknowledges that Knoizen "knew that Radford was seeing things. I sometimes transmitted material to the chairman through him [Knoizen]," In Chairman Moorer's absence, material was generally held for his return, but on occasion it was sent directly to Admiral Zumwalt, the CNO. One particularly sensitive subject for the Navy in this period was a bitter dispute with the State Department over the Navy's ability to use harbor in Greece as the home port for the Sixth Fleet. The Navy wanted pressure put on Athens to comply; the State Department refused, citing the right-wing militarv dictatorship then in power in Greece. Radford says he was told to obtain information on discussions a

Carrying the Contraband

29

on this matter being held among senior NSC officials. He did, and documents were immediately sent to Zumwalt. The Navy ultimately prevailed in this dispute.

Radford cannot remember ever sending or Air Force chiefs;

specific items to the

they would have done so only through Moorer's In

March of

Army

those services ever received information, he says,

if

office.

1971 Radford took a second trip with Haig. While in

he was "cautioned several times and told not to take any chances," on this trip, he later admitted, Haig's briefcase was "always open to" him, and he didn't hesitate to dip into it. He also his instructions

worked

tirelessly for

Haig, buying his liquor, doing his laundry, and

carrying sensitive messages from Haig to the communications center at the U.S.

Embassy

in Saigon or to

American military headquarters and

seeing that these messages were transmitted, logged, and safeguarded.

Radford's exertions on this trip yielded material about Haig's discussions with South Vietnamese leaders, military officials, and U.S.

Embassy personnel,

all of which Robinson routed through to Moorer. Haig was so pleased with the yeoman's assistance on the trip that he sent a letter to Robinson on March 21, 1971, saying that Radford "was given many requirements at all hours of the day and accomplished them all with enthusiasm and cheerfulness," and that Radford had handled the sensitive messages "in a diligent and expeditious manner. Please extend my personal thanks to Yeoman Radford for a job .

.

.

well done."

That "job well done" got Radford assigned boss on another similar

recommended

trip.

It

is

to

accompany Haig's

not clear whether or not Haig

likely. By June and duty been replaced by Admiral Welander, who made the arrangements with Haig for Radford to accompany Kissinger and an entourage of fifteen people on a swing through Southeast Asia from July 1 to July 17. "Be careful and don't get caught," Radford later testified that Welander had instructed him. "Don't take any chances." The official itinerary for the Kissinger trip listed South Vietnam, Thailand, India, West Pakistan, Paris, and then on to San Clemente to report to the president. However, once in Pakistan, Kissinger made a

this

arrangement to Kissinger, but

of 1971 Admiral Robinson had

secret

flight

to

left for his

it is

sea

Peking to wrap up the details of the soon-to-beto China." This was one of the most closely held

announced "opening

secrets of Nixon's first

term

As he had on the Haig

—and Radford found out about

it.

Radford was given unlimited access to Kissinger's personal papers, including his briefcase and luggage. Before the trip was half over, Radford had collected so much material that he trips,

SPY RING

30

had to send

it

back to Washington via diplomatic pouch.

with the assistance of a friend

New

Delhi. Radford

crammed

addressed them to himself

still

stationed in the U.S.

He

did so

Embassy

in

the stolen papers into envelopes and

the Pentagon, and his friend arranged for

at

the pouch to be sent through the secure courier system.

Then came

the prize.

Once

the plane

left

Pakistan, Radford rifled

Kissinger's briefcase and discovered a document addressed to the

president and marked eyes only

— Kissinger's report on

his talk with and made notes for Welander, but did not copy it. During the stop in Paris, Radford also obtained details of Kissinger's private talks with North Vietnamese negotiator Le Due Tho about a possible settlement to the war. Radford and Kissinger arrived at San Clemente together. Welander and Moorer flew in separately. A National Security Council meeting had been scheduled by the president for Kissinger's return. Radford was summoned to Moorer's suite; there, he saw the chairman in another room, waiting to talk to Welander. It was then that Radford turned over the bulky package of documents he had stolen on the trip. From these documents, the Joint Chiefs learned of the content of the secret talks between Kissinger and Chou, something they could not have otherwise known. Depending on whose version you believe, this either was or was not the first time the Joint Chiefs heard anything at all about the opening to Peking. The documents also gave the Joint Chiefs new information about Kissinger's Paris talks with Le Due Tho. A third document obtained by Radford was also welcomed by Moorer the agenda for the forthcoming NSC meeting. "Kissinger wanted to control those meetings," Radford says, "Just like he wanted to control everything else. My obtaining the agenda put Admiral Moorer in a very powerful position [to] anticipate what Kissinger was going to say and do." During his deft-handed period, Radford obtained several such agendas for his patrons.

Chinese Premier Chou En-lai. Radford scanned

it

—

.

On

a third

trip to

Radford was able to

.

.

Vietnam with Haig,

steal

in

September of 1971,

information regarding another matter of

prime importance to Moorer, the "Vietnamization" of the war,

a

which control of the ground war was progressively turned over to the South Vietnamese; Radford obtained this information from a memo of Haig's conversation (addressed to Kissinger) on his discussion of this issue with President Nguyen Van Thieu. Additional booty from Haig's briefcase included papers pertaining to troop strengths and intended withdrawal rates of American forces. strategy in

Carrying the Contraband Three months Pakistan

"tilt,"

later,

31

with the publication of Anderson's column on the

Radford's tenure at the liaison office ended.

Though

commissioned officership was obviously halted, Radford chose to remain in the Navy, and did so for five more years, returning to civilian life in 1976. He worked at a nuclear power plant and at a lumber mill and held other jobs. All the while he remained in the naval reserves, and when the Navy instituted a search for submarine yeomen, a local recruiter asked him to reenlist. He did so in July 1982 and today serves as a senior chief yeoman at a naval base on the West Coast. His application for a commission as a chief warrant officer is under consideration. At the time of his reenlistment, he told us, no mention was made of his troubles in the 1970s, and no mention has been made of it to him since by the Navy. He has received all the requisite security clearances to serve on nuclear subs, for instance, and his clearance has been regularly renewed. Though he hasn't been dogged in recent years by what happened in the early 1970s, Radford nonetheless remains bitter about the treatment he received from the Navy at the time of his confession. He had obeyed his superiors but was pilloried for it, and never allowed to rise above an after his confession his progress

toward

a

enlisted man's rank.

Radford believes the stealing from the White House was made necessary by decisions on the part of Nixon and Kissinger to withhold vital information from the Joint Chiefs. Radford argues that the president and his national security adviser showed so much contempt for the chiefs, and had so "fragmented the government," that the military was forced to react. "The military had to intervene because if they hadn't, I'm afraid what would have happened. When I first went there [the liaison office] it was all blue sky and apple pie and 'I'm supporting the United States Constitution; I'm

up here working with

this team.' It

me to learn they weren't a team at all. It was and splinter groups, and egos, and professional jealousies a sewer. Hov/ does a government operate like that?" When Richard Nixon found out about the military espionage ring that was feeding information to Admiral Moorer, he was faced with a similar question: how to operate a government infected with such profound distrust of the president and his top adviser.

didn't take long for factions

.

.

.

THE ADMIRAL'S

AFTER his vacation on to

New

Key Biscayne, President Nixon

flew briefly

York for an evening of dinner, sightseeing, and theater with his

wife Pat and his daughters JuHe and Tricia and their husbands.

He

flew

back to Washington on Sunday, December 19, five days after the damaging Anderson column. He had not been told of the Radford interrogation or confession, and was not told then, because he had to go with Kissinger to Bermuda for two days of meetings with British leaders. Only when Nixon returned to the White House late on Tuesday, December 21, 1971, did he learn of the Radford espionage, in a 6:00 p.m.

who had been

meeting with his three top advisers: John Ehrlichman, closely following the investigation through David Young;

Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman; and Attorney General John Mitchell, who was also the president's closest personal friend in the administration.

Ehrlichman laid out the story from Radford, who by this time had undergone three examinations by Stewart and his team. Nixon's response to the story was characteristically cautious. He did not become enraged. What Radford was presenting to his investi-

32

The Admirars Confession

33

gators were bombshells that in Nixon's view had to be carefully

handled. According to Ehrlichman's recollections, the president wonif Radford was truthfully recounting a clandestine operation by Moorer, or were these merely the exaggerations of a frightened yeoman trying to save himself. Nixon's deeper concern was whether further

dered

would expose the supersensitive backchannel that he and Kissinger had set up with the aid of Moorer. To resolve both of these problems, Nixon decreed that Admiral Welaninvestigation of the military espionage

der should be questioned to see

The

if

he could corroborate Radford's story.

summoned

following day, Ehrlichman

own

Pentagon to Ehrlichman's of the West

Wing

large,

the admiral from the

paneled office on the third floor

of the White House, the traditional office for the

domestic adviser to the president, located directly above the Oval Office. In nearly three years as Nixon's counsel and domestic chief,

Ehrlichman had conducted manv sensitive discussions in this comfortroom with its dark mahogany walls, low ceiling, and Queen Anne furniture; few had been as traumatic or would leave as many scars on the administration as the one he conducted with Admiral Welander starting at one in the afternoon of December 22, 1971. Welander arrived to find Young seated in one wing-backed chair and Ehrlichman on a sofa. The admiral took the other wing chair, and could not help but notice the bulky recorder with a large spool of tape that lay on the coffee table in front of them; a microphone protruded from a nearby stand. Ehrlichman began the interview in a deliberately stern manner. After pleasantries, he handed the admiral a document drafted by Young and based on Radford's confessions. It was to be a "statement of Rear Admiral Robert O. Welander" of the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and it read, in full: able

Yeoman Charles Radford, while

my

aide in

my

capacity as Liaison

Officer between the National Security Council and the Office of the

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of various

Staff, did obtain

documents and memoranda

memcons [memos White House

relating to,

unauthorized copies of

among

other matters,

of conversations] of private top-level meetings, internal

political dealings, secret negotiations

ments, contingency plans,

political

with foreign govern-

agreements, troop movements,

tel-

cons [memos of telephone conversations], secret channel papers and defense budget papers. These papers were obtained surreptitiously from a variety

of senior

members of

the

NSC

staff

and without

their

knowl-

edge or consent.

Radford furnished

As

I

considered

it

me

with copies of the foregoing described papers.

part of

my

job to inform the

Chairman of the

Joint

SPY RING

34

either directly or indirectly passed those papers of particular

Chiefs,

I

interest

on

to him, or to

whomever happened

to

be Acting Chairman

at

the time.

Ehrlichman asked Welander to read the statement, correct any it. Welander read the statement but refused to sign it, and said later that Ehrlichman had been trying to force him to

inaccuracies, and sign

"admit to the wildest possible, totally false charges of 'political spying' on the White House." And so, he later testified, he found himself "trying to put gross distortions of fact and circumstances into some reasonable and rational perspective." Ehrlichman would have preferred

Welander sign the document, but he mainly wanted to impress the admiral that this meeting was held "at the president's request," and that the situation was viewed "very, very seriously." Today, Ehrlichman muses, he would have read him his rights, "but that wasn't the vogue in those days." Instead, Ehrlichman proceeded to disarm Welander so completely that the admiral's initial refusal to sign the statement proved only prelude to a confession that lasted more than an hour and was much more detailed than the admissions on the statement. As Ehrlichman began the questioning, he carefully asked the admiral if the recorder could be turned on. Welander agreed that it could. This tape of Admiral Welander's confession was to become one of the greatest secrets of the Nixon years, one so closely held that its very existence forced many important people to actions they might otherwise never have taken, and which eventually contributed substantially and directly to Nixon's resignation. The tape and its transcript have never before been made public, and although the existence of Welander's confession has been known for some time, the story of the tape and its precise contents has never been fully told prior to the publication of this book. Appendix B of this book contains this Welander that

confession, as well as a later one.

Ehrlichman began by asking Welander to give him "a feel for this man Radford," and "a little bit about the Joint Chiefs of Staff liaison operation and how that works." Welander described his "two hats and two offices," one title as assistant for national security affairs to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the other as a senior member of the National Security Council staff, with offices in both the Pentagon and the EOB. A JCS liaison office had been established inside the White House ten years earlier, and its occupant had performed the role of military adviser to the head of the NSC. rhat function changed "rather significantly" when Nixon

The Admiral's Confession became president

in

1969 and Alexander Haig became Kissinger's

military assistant, Welander explained.

now

35

The

office

had remained but

reported through Haig as a conduit for information between the

NSC and the JCS. It was seemingly because both Robinson and Welander had reported to the NSC through Haig that Welander appeared insistent in the interview/confession that Ehrlichman talk to Haig, "really about some of the other things I do specifically for Henry [Kissinger]. many times there are things which he wants to come to the attention of the chairman." Well, yes, that avenue was there for Kissinger, Welander added later in the interview, but messages to and from Kissinger went through Haig. "Nine-tenths of the things that I do I give to Al, and then it's a matter of his judgment whether or not it goes to Henry." iVlost of this work was "outside the correspondence system," meaning that it was confidential information rarely made available to anyone else on the NSC staff other than Haig. After setting out his legitimate function, the admiral spoke of Radford as "one of the finest young fellows" he had ever worked with, praising him as "extremely conscientious" and "completely selfless." He related how Radford had wanted to get out of his assignment because the hours were so demanding, but that a transfer had been denied. He pointed out that he had tried to loosen the reins on Radford so the yeoman could spend more time with his family, and had then been chagrined to learn that Radford had been moonlighting to earn money. "That disappointed me a little bit," Welander said. We asked Radford about this recently, and he says Welander "never said anything to me about my working at those other jobs. I never heard any criticism about it." He undertook those jobs in a drugstore, as a newspaper delivery man, and as a security guard, because "it was expensive living in Washington. I had two kids and my wife wasn't .

.

.

working." In Ehrlichman's comfortable office, after dispensing with Radford,

they were ready for the larger issues. Welander said his relationship

with Mooter was so exclusive that the JCS, especially

it

sometimes sparked battles within away. At such times, Welander

when Moorer was

was technically subject to the orders of the acting chief, a title that rotated alternately from one service chief to another; Welander would usually withhold from the acting chief the information he got from Radford, even when Welander was subjected to "knock-down and dragout fights" in the halls of the Pentagon from an acting chief who demanded the "sensitive" information. Welander's ability to hold back the material stemmed from his powerful personal relationship with Moorer. Ehrlichman asked him specifically if he reported to the Joint

— SPY RING

36

"There's nobody between me and Admiral Moorer," Welander explained. "I mean it's a direct personal liaison." He only gave materials to the acting chairman when it was absolutely unavoidable, and even then, "I very carefully paraphrase it or just give him exactiv what he needs to have to act as chairman."

Chiefs or to Moorer.

Welander told Ehrlichman and Young that he had "agonized a hell of a lot over this thing," that it was "personally embarrassing to me, and I think it could be potentially embarrassing to Admiral Moorer, whom I think the world of." Welander was good at knowing where to put his loyalty. It was one of the qualities that recommended him to Moorer and Zumwalt for the highly sensitive liaison and espionage operation at the NSC. Immediately prior to that appointment, Welander had worked for Zumwalt in the CNO's office, and for Moorer when he had been CNO. Earlier in his career Welander had followed the standard route to advancement, a degree from the Naval Academy, a career in the destroyer fleet; he had come to Washington to have his ticket punched, that is, to hold down a Pentagon desk assignment, a prerequisite in the modern Navy for being awarded the rank of admiral. Welander gave no sign to Ehrlichman and Young that he had not wanted the liaison office assignment. It was a job that was "very much in demand," supposedly "the finest job for a flag officer." But years later Welander insists he was essentially pressured into taking the position. "I wanted to go to sea," he told us, but Mooter's assistant Captain Harry Train had reminded him, " 'You're the only guy that Bud Zumwalt and Moorer agree on. They both trust you.' I knew that [the job] would help me get what I wanted, which was to command a task force."

Welander arrived

at the post in early

May

1971, and his month-long

apprenticeship in the liaison office under Robinson was difficult.

Welander was before making

tall,

a

bookish, and inclined to overly study a matter

move, while Robinson was short, brash, decisive

"very abrasive," Welander called him, and disparaged Robinson's proclivity for

convincing other admirals to do "something to advance his

career."

own

insights on the contrasts between Robinson and admired the care with w hich Rol)inson would meticulously review, analyze, and catalog what had been purloined, and then deliver it personally to Moorer. Welander, says Radford, was less disciplined and less careful about the material, and would see that the material was often passed to Moorer through aides such as Knoizen and Train. Despite what Radford referred to as Welander's "cold feet," the

Radford

later

the two men.

provided his

The yeoman

liked

The Admiral's Confession

37

admiral carefully followed Robinson's instructions during the monthlong training period, which included sessions on the "gossip"

NSC

among

Welander says Robinson instructed him on "who was doing what to who" at the NSC and "who had what kinds of information." Robinson hadn't relied solely on Radford in the gathering of information, but also had developed his own sources, and, Welander says, Robinson would trade a piece of information about the Pentagon to a civilian NSC aide in exchange for a piece from within that organization. Welander took over that operation as well, which allowed him as Robinson had done to come into the possession of "talking papers," or summaries of topics and likely debate on them that would ensue during forthcoming policy meetings. Such "talking papers" had been prepared for Kissinger, and by rushing them to Moorer the chairman was enabled to prepare his own strategic responses to the initiatives Kissinger would launch at NSC meetings. There was a conscious decision on the part of Moorer to sacrifice certain privileged Pentagon information in order to obtain the more valuable talking papers. "It was a quid pro quo arrangement," Welander told us; when he first began at the liaison office, he was told by Robinson and by Moorer's aide Harry Train that it would be his decision as to what they would put out as bait. He had to be sure they didn't go too far and offer up really sensitive JCS material but, he reported, he did give up everything from backchannel messages between General Creighton Abrams in Vietnam and Chairman Moorer to position papers on troop movements. NSC staffers "came to me with all kinds of requests, all the time. I often felt I was giving up more to them than I was getting," Welander recalls. Amid the confusion of the NSC staff, Welander thought that it was only Haig who understood his role completely. He reported to Haig virtually every day, and "oftentimes in the evening, when things had quieted down." As Robinson had, Welander forged a close relationship with Haig. It was Haig who had "pressed" him to provide Radford for the

—

staff.

—

—

W

the Kissinger trip, and because of Welander's

with Haig, he could hardly refuse such

own

close relationship

a request.

After having plunged into confession in Ehrlichman's West

Wing

Welander pulled back later in the interview and became coy, claiming he had only agreed to send Radford on the Haig and Kissinger

office,

trips to

"keep his ears open, his eyes open."

Radford scoffs when shown these partial demurrals. Of course Welander knew what he was up to, Radford told us: "Robinson explained to him what was happening and when they were relieving each other he [Robinson] said, and

I

remember

this very clearly, that

I

SPY RING

38

fill Welander in on the mechanics of how it was done. And I did. 1 told Welander how I did it." Ehrlichman, familiar through Young with Radford's own confession, carefully prodded Welander as to Moorer's knowledge of Radford's activities. He focused on what had happened after they'd all met in San Clemente following the July 1971 Kissinger trip. Welander avowed that it was only at that time, when he saw Radford's bulging envelopes, that he first realized the extensive nature of Radford's eyes and ears. Wfelander kept insisting that it was all Radford's doing and

[Radford] would be glad to

initiative:

The Chairman and

NSC

flew out to the

I

meeting out in San Clemente

and that was the day that the announcement was made about Henry's to Peking.

first trip

briefly.

.

.

So

I

only had

a

chance to talk with Radford very

when he came back he had an envelope

.

of things, and

full

he said perhaps you might care to go through some of these things.

They may be of interest to you; and I started to go through them and I was very much startled. ... I said, "Chuck, where did you get these things?" He said, "Well, I used to take the burn bags out for disposal and things of that tvping

I'd

through

keep

going on, which I

showed

my

some 1

to

discussed them.

locked in

it

I

just

...

as far as

spent a night culling

I

had burned. There were

on some things

a

that

few

were

assembled and made some comments on a cover sheet

And when

Admiral Moorer.

Then he

gave them

all

back to

he had read them

me and

I

have them

we all

personal safe over at the Pentagon.

that he'd given

traveled with

whatever."

fairly significant insights

Wfelander opened up

Young

and Fd kind of go through them and

and 90 percent of

this

things that gave

and

sort,

a flimsy or

Haig

to

a little

more, admitting to Ehrlichman and

instructions to Radford before the

Vietnam

that

fall.

He

told

yeoman

Radford that the Joint

Chiefs were "concerned about the troop withdrawal rate," and to bring

back any information he could get on the matter. Radford returned with more purloined papers, one of which was a "significant" memo

on Haig's discussions with President Thieu. "That I made available to the Chairman," Welander said, ". and he [Moorer] back to me." The material was in Wclander's safe at the Pentagon. Ehrlichman wanted to know about more than Radford's success on the trips, and asked if the yeoman had ever picked up materials around the W' bite House. Yes, Welander conceded, "every now and then" when Radfi)rd delivered documents fi)r White House secretaries he would .

.

The Admiral's Confession bring the papers to Welander and ask, " 'Admiral,

is

39

this of

any

interest

"

to you?'

Welander maintained that he would only "scan" the papers and satisfied, and while he didn't rant and rave, he kept up the pressure. Ehrlichman pressed for an admission that Welander had actually transmitted materials that Radford had stolen to Moorer, as is evident in the following then give them back to Radford. But Ehrlichman wasn't

exchanges: E:

If

take

W:

it

I

[what Radford showed you] were something of interest, did you

it

out?

would look

you make E:

And

at

it

and occasionally

a xerox of this

send

W: (Nodded

it

one portion of

I'd say, it?"

"Okay, Chuck, would

Or something

of that sort.

over to the chairman?

yes.)

E: So he [Radford] has had some access that

is

outside of your ordinary

channels. ... So he would be bird-dogging occasionally and bring you things?

W: E:

I'm obviously not happy about having to relate that. I

understand. But he, of course, has gone into this in his testimony

and he

he had actually delved into people's briefcases and

testified that

come up with

material

Captain Robinson

in

which he had duplicated and turned over

some

to

cases.

Welander hemmed and hawed and attempted to distance himself from Radford. "I never delved into it, you know, to find out specifics of anything," he insisted, but then confessed that Radford had brought him "annotated first drafts" of documents from the Kissinger trip that Radford "assured me that he got" from rifling the burn bags. Radford had also brought him "complete copies of memcons" from the fall trip, Welander added, but nothing that "would have come directly from busting into somebody's luggage." E: But there

isn't

any question

in

your mind, though, that he has

brought you stuff from time to time that has been obtained from

W: E:

.

.

.

Surreptitiously and everything else.

Now, does Admiral Moorer know

available to

theJCS?

that this kind of source has

been

SPY RING

40 W: I

have shown him, as

I

felt

that he had to

E: Sure, but again he

W: He knows

The

that

say,

I

some of the most

significant things that

know. is

aware that the source

Radford picked

this

up on

is

irregular.

a trip.

Ehrhchman and Young as they quesWing office, and squeezed an admission

Kissinger trip fascinated

tioned VVelander in the West

from the admiral that "one piece of paper" on Kissinger's secret negotiations from that trip, in EhrHchman's words, "advised you of something that you were not privy to." "That's right," Welander responded. "Nor to the best of my knowledge had the Chairman been privy to it." During a more recent interview with us, Welander was far less hesitant than he was that day in the room with Ehrlichman, going so far as to admit that "When Admiral Moorer asked me I told him where Radford got this stuff and that Radford had taken it from the burn bags." Yet he still maintains the posture that what he and Radford did wasn't espionage. "Getting stuff out of the burn bags was snooping, but if I had known about Radford going into Kissinger's briefcase I There was nothing wrong with Radford would have fired him. mooching around to find out what was going on." As for his own role, he is adamant: "I didn't do anything illegal. I was keeping my boss informed and I never intended to do anything otherwise." However, Radford says, "I was completely aboveboard with [Robinson and Welander]. ... If they wanted to know the exact second I picked [a document] up, 1 annotated it right on the piece of paper in the upper right-hand corner, the name of the guy who wrote it, where I got it, whether it was on the plane, out of his briefcase or whether I got it in his hotel room. Which city we were in. I gave them specific data so thev could judge the chronology as well as the actual value of the document." As Welander opened up during his White House interview, Ehrlichman continued to press the admiral, eliciting an admission that Welander had instructed Radford to gather information on a matter "the Navy was highly interested in." Welander asked the yeoman to find out if Kissinger was likely to side with the Pentagon in a dispute with the State Department over naval bases in the Mediterranean. "In about five minutes," Welander told Ehrlichman and Young, Radford returned with a copy of an NSC staff paper on the matter. Perhaps understanding that he had already incriminated himself, Welander softened as his interview with Ehrlichman and Young contin.

.

.

The Admiral's Confession

41

When

Ehrlichman handed the statement Welander had originally him a second time, the admiral began to elaborate on the various types of documents Radford had stolen. " 'Memcons of private top-level meetings,' " he read, as if it were a question, and then told Ehrlichman and Young the answer, "Yes, from his trips." " 'Political agreements,' " Welander read, and answered immediately after, "In the international sense. You mean Al's most recent trip and his discussions with Thieu?" "Exactly," said Ehrlichman. " 'Telcons.' I can't think of any unless there were from the trip or something of that sort. I think on one occasion there was some reference made in a message to a telephone conversation with the White House and Ambassador Smith with regard to the SALT negotiaued.

refused to sign to

tions."

They went on

ticking off the types of purloined secrets

—backchan-

nel papers on talks with foreign governments, troop movements and withdrawals, and so on. Welander confirmed that Moorer had learned

Due Tho, one of the most guarded White House initiatives. Learning that Kissinger was talking secretly with the enemy could only have increased the Joint Chiefs' anxiety that the civilians were making deals with the enemy while American soldiers died in the jungle. After Ehrlichman and he had been through the list, Welander finally admitted directly, "I have in fact either shown or discussed these papers with Admiral Moorer, as

of Kissinger's secret peace talks with Le closely

The literal papers I say, not with the Acting Chairman at the time. and everything else I only show to Admiral Moorer." After this ultimate admission, Welander returned to his opening theme, Radford's culpability, which he still thought hinged on Radford's supposedly having given things to Jack Anderson. "I do feel that some punitive action ought to be taken if in fact there is a substantial case against him," Welander concluded. The tape reveals that Ehrlichman and Young \veren't as certain that this was a wise course. Ehrlichman put it to Welander this way: .

E: Supposing he [Radford] says this stuff over to

is

all

about the same as the other

"Do you rhetorically,

.

didn't feel too badly about turning

Anderson because

used to turn stuff over to them

one

I

.

I

was

a

the time.

spy for the Joint Chiefs.

And

as far as I'm

I

the morals involved in

concerned.

have qualms about that?" Ehrlichman asked Welander

and then answered, "We have qualms about that."

SPY RING

42

There followed in the conversation a remark of Welander's that evoked no real comment from Ehrlichman or Young at the time, a reference to Welander's warning that the whole affair "exposes some very, very sticky relationships and the function here that has been going on." It was an alarm bell, to Young particularly repeated elsewhere in the taped conversation about the central and mysterious role played in the private channel communications of the White House and the Pentagon by Alexander Haig, who had more "sticky relationships" than anyone else in the White House. The "two-way street" to which Welander referred, the one that allowed the brass to receive as well as send information, depended on Haig. The general conveyed information from the JCS to the NSC, and from the White House to the

—

—

Pentagon.

Haig was ambitious, and the assignment to the

NSC

and the

frequent private meetings with Kissinger and Nixon that he held placed

him

at

the center of power.

By

1971, with Kissinger frequently abroad,

Haig often supplanted Kissinger

as the president's

sounding board.

Nixon liked Haig, because Haig had just the sort of tough, military mind that Kissinger lacked. Nixon consulted Haig readily, and by his closeness with Haig kept Kissinger off guard;

it

was

a tactic to prevent

much power. The three men engaged in an dance though neither Kissinger in those early years nor Nixon during his entire presidency seems to have entertained the notion that General Haig's loyalty might lie somewhere other than with his White House patrons. Haig's lovalty was principally to the military establishment that had brought him to his present position, and he allayed some of the fears of his Pentagon brethren about his privileged access to Nixon by passing on to them intimate details about the man they preferred to Kissinger from having too

—

intricate

Henry Kissinger. "The Pentagon was terrified of

hate. Professor

in his

Kissinger," wrote William Gulley

book Breaking Cover; Gulley served

in the

White House as and

director of the Military Office in the Nixon-Kissinger years,

explains

The

why Haig was

so important as a counterweight to Kissinger.

military brass, Gulley contended, didn't

telling

them what

to

do with

their missiles

want Kissinger

and their submarines or

who

should be promoted. That was their department, and they wanted to

keep

it

that way. Kissinger

was

just

National Security Advisor to the

President, and his role didn't include disposing of navies.

now

But he sure

they had their

as hell

had the ear of the

own boy

[I

bombs, or armies and

Commander

laigj in a substantial

in Chief.

But

position over there at

The Admiral's Confession the White House.

Defense or to,

He

43

could jump in his car and brief the Secretary of

few carefully selected generals on what Kissinger was up

a

what was coming down the road

to

meet them.

who as one of the Plumbers had worked with Haig on and similar investigations, recalls that "Haig was really the JCS guy inside Kissinger's staff right from the beginning. He rose fast but he was the guy that certainly would take care of his military Egil

the

Krogh,

SALT

leak

superiors."

Buried in Welander's confession to Ehrlichman and Young were subtle, but in retrospect very telling, references to Alexander

some

Haig. Welander raised the subject of Haig several times, volunteering

how Welander obtained

certain

NSC

information other than through

Radford's surreptitious activities.

One

subject always of interest to the JCS was "the interplay between

Henry and the president and the chairman." Ehrlichman asked him about the form that information took, and Secretary Laird and

Welander replied that it was "my conversations with Al." Ehrlichman asked if Radford ever brought him bootlegged copies of "contingency plans," and Welander responded forthrightly: "Al Haig has cut me in on what we've been thinking about on the most recent thing and given me a copy of game plans and so on." Commenting on Radford's take from Haig's most recent trip, Welander sought to minimize the significance of the information Radford had brought back, saying, "We knew pretty much what the game plan was going to be. Al related to me orally his discussions and some observations that the staff people had made." In response to Welander's

reference to the "very,

very sticky

Ehrlichman wondered: If White House was eliminated, could the function exist? "Really I think you ought to talk to Al Haig

relationships" concerning the liaison office,

the

JCS

office at the

of the conduit

on

still

Welander responded. Ehrlichman didn't attach significance to Welander's references to Haig, but Young, who worked more closely with Kissinger and had viewed with suspicion Haig's meteoric rise in the White House, asked an important question. Could Haig have truly not been cognizant of Radford's surrepitious activities? "Do you think Al is in any way aware that when [Radford] was on a trip with him, that he might come back and bootleg a copy and give it to you?" asked Young. Welander, who already had said that Haig was the person who had requested Radford for the trips, gave a reply that was both to the point and oblique. "You can only ask Al; I've never discussed it with him," this,"

SPY RING

44

the admiral began, but then launched into a discussion of what a male

would have had to do on that trip, and made a most important observation: "Were I in the same case and having borrowed a yeoman, I think I would have concluded that most of the things the yeoman might have been exposed to would in turn be exposed to the guy he normally works for." Welander was saying that had he been in Haig's place, knowing all he knew about how the military operated, and how senior officers could command complete and unquestioning obedience from their subordinates, he would have been forced to assume the yeoman must assistant

be reporting to his superior. The access given to Radford on Haig's trips was remarkable; even

Radford believed at the time that it was unusual. "I thought [that Haig] was placing quite a bit of trust in somebody that he really didn't knowthat well," Radford says. We asked Welander about his interview with Ehrlichman and Young, and whether Haig knew that Radford was collecting documents and that whatever Radford saw would get back to the JCS. In hindsight, he was more direct than he'd been in 1971. "I think Haig knew that Radford was observing things," Welander told us. "I think it was stuff that Haig expected me to see and that I would make available to the chairman." Welander recalls, too, that Haig would oftentimes tell him things for the chairman's ears, though "sometimes he would say, 'Don't tell the chairman,' which probably meant I was supposed to tell the chairman; that's the way things worked sometimes in the White House at that time."

Accepting Welander's belief that Haig must have known at least some of what Radford was doing has a number of important conse-

Haig had known of the secret diplomatic China when he had arranged for Radford to accompany Kissinger. But Nixon had ordered that the Pentagon be cut out of the attempt to play the China card. If Haig still wanted information about what happened on the China trip to go to Mooter, but in a way that he himself was not suspected of leaking and that would allow him to retain the confidence of Nixon and Kissinger, what better way than to send along the military's eyes and ears? Ibday, Admiral Moorer insists he knew of the opening to China even before Radford departed on the July 1971 trip, during which

quences.

For example,

initiative to

Kissinger secretly fiew to Peking.

This idea, however, flabbergasted

who knew

of the opening. Attorney General

one of the few people

John Mitchell; before could not have

known

his death, Mitchell insisted to us that in

Moorer

advance of Nixon's plan to open the door to

The Admiral's Confession Peking. Moorer disagrees. "I can

known what

wouldn't have

you

tell

about

that.

There

I'm not going to

is

we

tell

I

you

did

—

—some of which we take up now and some — support Welander's Haig

evidence

will

will get to later

knew of Radford's

activities.

Radford returned from a

right now that Mitchell know about it. Let me just you how I knew about it I knew tell

knew.

it."

of which

him

I

45

belief that

to

Recently, Moorer confirmed that

when

with Kissinger, Welander delivered to sheaf of materials Radford had collected while traveling with

Kissinger. Normally,

his trip

when Moorer

received these sensitive papers he

them in a Pentagon safe, but in this Moorer turned over the purloined documents to Haig. Welander "did carry [the documents] to me," Moorer told us; "I had been told every damn thing that was in there." He then blurted out, "I gave instructed Welander to place

instance

the things back to Haig."

By handing the hot documents back to Haig, Moorer in effect shouted that he was not worried that Haig would ask how Moorer had Moorer had had a moment's concern that Haig would ask embarrassing questions that would uncover the yeoman's activities, Moorer would have kept the sensitive papers in the safe. But he says he

obtained them.

If

"gave the things" to Haig.

Moorer says, Haig had received the purloined documents from him, Haig would have been obligated to report the leak to Nixon or Kissinger. But Nixon's and Kissinger's memoirs of the period If,

as

suggest that neither the president nor the national security adviser

knew anything of

the spying until Radford's confession in

1971. Interviews of others in the

White House inner

December

circle

confirm

there was no report of the military's surreptitious activities before

Radford confessed. Moreover, a former the

NSC

in those years

staff colleague of

who was

both Haig and Kissinger

at

familiar with the operations of the

Rembrandt Robinson and Alexander Haig had a special relationship. He recalls that many people would come to see Haig at his office in the White House, but whenever Robinson came over to talk, "Haig would shut the door. No one else was allowed in. It was fundamentally different from the way Haig dealt with other people at the NSC. In other cases, he might close the door, military liaison office revealed to us that

traffic in and out of the office. Not with Robinson." While the JCS was quite specifically excluded from the NixonKissinger plans to make an opening to China, Alexander Haig was not. Kissinger's memoirs recount that Haig sent backchannel messages to Kissinger on the trip, "held the fort heroically and efficiently

but there might be

SPY RING

46

in

my

absence," and received from Kissinger via cable the one- word

message, "Eureka," that told Haig and Nixon that Kissinger's mission

had succeeded and that the Chinese had approved

a

forthcoming trip

to Peking by the president. Nixon's near-obsession with secrecy for Kissinger's China negotiations have been well documented, and both men have written at great

length in their memoirs on their rationale for developing this historic

opening to China without including in the plans any other key foreign policy figures in the government. In his memoirs, Kissinger explained that by going it alone, Nixon had taken a huge political gamble; should the gambit fail, "Having made the decisions without executive or Congressional consultation, Nixon left himself quite naked should anything go wrong; in such lonely decisions he was extremely courageous." And as Nixon well knew, the new relationship with Peking

was sure

to anger critics

on the right

who

felt

that the U.S. had an

obligation to continue close ties to Taiwan; senior military officers,

including the hard-line anticommunist Chairman Moorer, were the most ardent supporters of Taiwan and of

its

among

strategic value to

America.

John Ehrlichman, the Joint Chiefs "knew the before most of the senior secret details of the people in the White House did." Such knowledge by the JCS was one of the things Nixon sought to prevent by the extreme secrecy that surrounded the Kissinger mission. "If somebody had said to the president, 'Do you want the Joint Chiefs to know what Henry is " doing,' " Ehrlichman says, "he would have said, 'Absolutely not.' Thus when Ehrlichman and Young concluded their interview with Admiral Welander, they were aghast on their president's behalf at the

But according

to

new China opening

breach of faith that the spying represented.

— Welander returned

packing

what had

just

happened

to

to the

They

Pentagon to

tell

sent the admiral

Chairman Moorer

him. In the White House, Young took the

it transcribed, and even before the transcript was in hand Ehrlichman made preparations to see the president about the matter, that very afternoon. "I had the sense that we got a lot more from WHander than we had any right to expect," Ehrlichman recalls for us. He remembers thinking at the time, "It was bigger because it involved Moorer. I had to warn the president."

tape to have

NIXON ORDERS A BURIAL

LESS

than two hours after they had obtained Admiral Welander's

taped confession on the afternoon of December 22, 197

1

,

man and David Young sat in Nixon's hideaway office in Office Building. The transcription of the tape would not

John Ehrlichthe Executive

be ready until

the following day, but Ehrlichman thought he had a political disaster

and insisted on bringing the bad news immediately to Bob Haldeman and John Mitchell, the two senior members of the administration on whom Nixon most usually relied, were also in attendance as Ehrlichman laid out the story for the president as he and Young had heard it from Welander. Ehrlichman was clearly disposed toward pursuing a thorough investigation. Now, what would the president do? Looking to precedent, Nixon knew all too well the actions of one of

on

his hands,

the president.

his predecessors. President

Harry

S.

Truman,

in regard to the insub-

Mac Arthur during the war in Korea. When the Supreme Commander of U.S. and Allied forces in Korea publicly challenged Truman's conduct of that war, Truman summarily fired him, even though the action brought down on the president a

ordination of General Douglas

47

SPY RING

48

firestorm of negative publicity. Historians have said in retrospect that

the firing of the popular

MacArthur was among Truman's most impor-

tant acts, one that strengthened the presidency

and the president's

authority under the Constitution. Arguing from precedent and citing

massive insubordination, Nixon could well have fired Moorer and gained from the episode.

However,

in this

meeting with

his top advisers, the first signals that

the president put out were not in that direction. Ehrlichman recalls that

Nixon did not ask

and evidenced no became available. The reason His mind was already made up as

to hear the tape recording,

interest in reading the transcript

when

it

would soon become evident: would have to take. Nixon's reactions to this crisis, John Mitchell told us after reviewing our evidence, went to the core of his being they were political. He was concerned with how this affair might hurt him, or help him. Could the situation be turned to his advantage? Where could blame be placed, and for what purpose? The president's chain of logic in the crisis would soon become apparent. John Ehrlichman, who met with the president several times during the first days of what became known as the Moorer-Radford affair, offered us in a recent interview the following analysis. As a political man, Nixon was convinced that the matter of utmost importance was his reelection in 1972, and he was also convinced that what would most recommend him to the electorate for reelection were foreign policy triumphs. He was scheduled to visit Peking in February 1972, to hold a summit in Moscow in the late spring at which he would sign the SALT and ABM treaties, and he was also hoping that the secret talks with Le Due Tho would bear fruit before the following November. He envisioned a steady series of these foreign policy thunderclaps, and riding them easily to reelection. In his mind those triumphs, in turn, depended on backchannel communications of the sort enabled by the JCS. Nixon also feared, Ehrlichman says, that "if he disciplined Moorer for conducting espionage activity against the president and Henry" it would expose the backchannel, reveal publicly how Secretary Laird had been repeatedly circumvented, and ultimately "give Laird a whip hand over the Joint Chiefs." Therefore, Ehrlichman concludes that Nixon reasoned, the backchannel must be protected. Ciuaranteeing the continued existence of the backchannel then became the engine that drove Nixon's actions. In his autobiography, RN, Nixon wrote he was "disturbed" to learn "the JCS was spying on the White House" but offered two additional reasons for keeping the scandal quiet. First, he worried that exposure of it would further demoralize for this

to the course of action he

—

Nixon Orders a Burial

49

when the armed services were already under by the antiwar movement. Second, he believed that top-secret information would leak out if the case was pursued. Ehrlichman and Mitchell offered a third reason: Nixon did not want the world to know that he had been spied upon; it would be embarrassing to him, and undermine the image of a strong leader that he was trying to protect. We have been told that at the December 22 meeting the president, the military at a time attack

seated at his

window, and

EOB

office desk,

rhetorically asked,

turned

"Why

his chair,

in

did

Tom do

stared out the

this?" referring to

Moorer. Later, he told everyone at the meeting to keep quiet about the

news of it was not to go beyond the room. Yet Nixon also instructed Young to write a full report, a directive with which Young enthusiastically began to comply, and eventually produced quite a espionage;

thick day-to-day account of the investigation that contained

all

the

evidence of the spying. Nixon also decided that Moorer had to be

spoken

to,

but the president didn't want to do

it

himself.

A

key Nixon

personality trait was the avoidance of personal confrontation at almost

any

cost.

Moorer

moned not to

Among

to

Nixon's

decisions was to give the job of bracing

first

John Mitchell. But even before the attorney general

the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,

fire

The

Nixon had made up

his

summind

or discipline Moorer.

reason was not then apparent to those in the room, but did

Nixon kept Moorer in office after bloodying the chairman's nose a bit, Ehrlichman remembers that the president argued, the chairman would be even more pliant than he had been in the past, and that would be good for Nixon. "He had two ways of going. He could either tear up the Joint Chiefs or he could continue to do business with them. And he says to himself, Tve got to keep that [backchannel] in place and keep doing business with them. And maybe

emerge

it

in

later

discussions.

If

turns out to be an advantage for

[about the spying].'

A

me

because they

know

Nixon diary entry from December of 1971, reprinted

gives further inkling of Nixon's analysis of the crisis.

He

Radford's "spying on the White House for the Joint Chiefs that

I

that

I

know

"

would not be surprised

at,

although

I

don't think

in

RN,

declared that is it's

something a healthy

practice."

Having decided

to

bury the spy ring but

of the stolen documents,

people touched by the

to

keep

Nixon nevertheless had

affair.

alive the recipient

to deal with the other

In his autobiography,

the train of thought that led to his next actions.

Nixon suggested "Whether or not

[Radford] had disclosed classified information to Anderson, the fact

— SPY RING

50

remained that he had jeopardized the relationship of the JCS to the White House," Nixon wrote. Having twisted the facts to fit his preconceptions about the origins, dimensions, and dangers of the scandal, Nixon now proceeded to vent his ire on the press and the yeoman rather than to discipline Moorer, Welander, or Robinson. Nixon ordered Ehrlichman to have the investigators uncover what the president was sure existed, a homosexual liaison between Radford and Jack Anderson; Ehrlichman bucked that task down to David Young, who relayed the request to Pentagon investigator Don Stewart. There was no prior evidence of such a relationship between Radford and Anderson, and Stewart refused to try and "find" one. Ehrlichman was put in the unfortunate position of having to follow up on this presidential imperative, and found that Mel Laird thought it was a terrible idea and resisted asking Radford to take a lie detector test about it. Laird pointed out that the subject matter of a polygraph test must first be disclosed to the person who is going to take it, and that person may refuse to take it if he doesn't want to risk self-incrimination or for any other reason. Suppose, Laird suggested to Ehrlichman in a telephone call on the morning of December 23, just suppose that "if [Radford] decides not to take the test and then he goes out and tells the press that that's what we're running here, I think we just get in a hell of a lot of We blow the lid." Ehrlichman had to instruct Laird to try anyway, because it was the president's wish, and because Nixon felt "there is no apparent motive for this fellow turning these papers over to Ander-

—

son."

So they were searching

and they were direction, away from the spy ring. The homosexuality premise had been pursued with Welander, who told Ehrlichman and Young he had seen no evidence to support the idea that Radford and Anderson were so linked. Radford only learned about the thesis of homosexuality much later, and now laughs about such an idea. "It's comical," he told us, pointing out that he and Tmi have been married twenty years and have together raised eight children. When advised that the possible homosexual link had been Nixon's idea, Radford looking in the

responded,

for a motive that didn't exist,

wrong

"It's

embarrassing."

Nixon seemed obsessed with Jack Anderson. He asked Ehrlichman, who had begun in the administration as counsel to the president, if the columnist had committed a crime in publishing the White House documents on the India-Pakistan situation, and what the statute of limitations was on such a crime. Ehrlichman understood the reference: Nixon had spoken to him several times about Anderson and other "enemies" to be targeted for punishment after reelection in 1972, when

Nixon Orders a Burial

51

Nixon would be

in a position to disregard any negative public reaction such treatment. Currently, though, Nixon wanted Ehrlichman to come down hard on the one known connection between Radford and to

Anderson: the

Mormon Church.

In a

move

that

Ehrlichman character-

ized to us as "Nixon's typical generic revenge," the president ordered

Mormon clergymen barred from performing services at the White House. "Don't use Mormon Bishop," states one of Ehrlichman's notes of his meeting with Nixon. There remained several other major players who had to be handled. all

John Mitchell was dispatched to question Moorer. Interestingly, when Mitchell summoned iVIoorer, he did so, he told us just before his death in 1988, without having learned any details of what Welander had said in his interview with Ehrlichman and Young. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs hurried to see Mitchell, flatly denied any knowledge of the stealing, and said that if he had ever been shown contraband material the blame lay with Welander, who should be disciplined. Because he never heard the tape or saw the transcript of Welander 's interview, Mitchell believed the chairman and reported Moorer's denial back to Nixon. This report by the attorney general may have been the flimsy evidence on which Nixon relied when six months later, and to the astonishment of many of his aides, he reappointed Moorer for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But, as Ehrlichman succinctly told us in an interview, this was to Nixon's advantage because he had a "pre-shrunk admiral" as head of theJCS. Then there was Secretary of Defense Mel Laird. Nixon worried that exposure of the backchannel would strengthen the hand of Laird, whom the president deeply distrusted. Laird had known about the liaison office through coming into contact with it in prior administrations, during his eight terms as a congressman who sat on a defenserelated subcommittee. Laird had argued with Nixon at the outset of this administration that the liaison office should be closed because it always had been a nuisance and a source of leaks. But Nixon needed the backchannel that the liaison office helped to enable, and his disagreement with Laird over the necessity of such a channel was part of the reason for his distrust. Nixon wanted to keep the secretary on board but not cognizant of the matters being discussed through the backchannel. It was obvious to Ehrlichman from his December 23 phone call to Laird that the secretary knew what was going on. Laird said he was "sure that Robinson bootlegged things" to the Pentagon brass, but "not to me. I never saw any of it." He knew that "somebody was giving them [the Joint Chiefs] information" and was certain "that

— SPY RING

52

them directly and giving them this sort of White House meeting, Nixon would dispatch Laird and to tell him to keep the lid on the

the president wasn't calling

information." In a later Mitchell to neutralize

espionage story.

Nixon's major personnel problem stemming from this

crisis,

every-

one agreed, was Henry Kissinger. The national security adviser hated leaks other than his own and would be apoplectic when he learned that he had been spied upon, that his briefcase had been rifled, and that his diplomatic initiatives had been known to the JCS. Typically, Nixon refused to deal with Kissinger personally until Ehrlichman had given the national security adviser precise instructions on how to behave in Nixon's presence. In an early afternoon meeting on December 23, Nixon issued his instruction to Ehrlichman. First, Kissinger must be told that he should never mention the espionage mess to the president. That tactic would work, because Kissinger was always circumspect when addressing the president, who was the source of whatever power Kissinger possessed. Next, Ehrlichman reports, the president "wanted me to tell Henry that I was handling the situation [together] with Mitchell and that the president is aware of the situation because of his backchannel relationship with the Joint Chiefs." Third, Nixon told Ehrlichman not "to let Henry get involved in the question of, Do we

keep Moorer or not." However, Kissinger was to be thrown allowed to shut to

it

down

the JCS liaison office at the

that the backchannel to the

Nixon's

final

order,

as

JCS was

reflected

in

NSC—

bone but was to see a

not dismantled.

Ehrlichman's notes of the

K

blame Haig." The president had obviously concluded that Kissinger would indeed try to fault Haig, the assistant who had the closest ties to the JCS, for having permitted a situation to exist in which Radford could steal from Kissinger. In retrospect, Ehrlichman told us recently, it was clear to him that the president's instruction was "a very explicit injunction from Nixon, intended to protect Haig," This was the first time, Ehrlichman recalls, that he ever saw Nixon protect Haig, and at the time Ehrlichman dismissed the action as a simply logical one: Nixon didn't want Kissinger blaming his chief military aide because the espionage had been conducted by the military. meeting, was odd: "Don't

let

Haig, Kissinger, and Nixon had a complex three-way relationship.

When Nixon

had hired Kissinger as national security adviser, the Harvard professor had sought a military aide not only to liaise with the JCS, but also because he and Nixon would need a backchannel communications capability, and that military aide would have to be

Nixon Orders a Burial

53

and might help facihtate it. The mihtary at first thought they'd better suggest a man with advanced degrees who would be comfortable with Kissinger, but Kissinger wanted what he described in his memoirs as "a more rough-cut type," preferably with combat experience, someone who didn't have the same academic viewpoint as he did and could provide a new perspective. Colonel Al Haig, then on the staff at West Point, was recommended by a mutual friend, and that nomination was seconded by Robert S. McNamara, secretary of defense under Kennedy and Johnson, and Joseph A. Califano, Jr., who had been Haig's boss at the Pentagon in the early 1960s when they served McNamara and Army Secretary Cyrus R. Vance. Kissinger liked that Haig had been endorsed by both conservatives and liberals, and hired him after one interview, and, as Kissinger himself wrote, "Haig soon became indispensable. He disciplined my anarchic tendencies and established coherence and procedure in an NSC staff of talented prima donnas." Within months, the army colonel, who had not been initially seen as a threat by Kissinger's civilian staff, had elbowed all of them out of the way and become Kissinger's principal privy to

it

deputy.

Then came

a

moment, former Nixon speechwriter William

reports in his book Before the Fall,

Kissinger, and Safire were working

when on

a

Safire

the balance changed. Nixon,

speech and needed a figure on

troop strength. Haig was called into the room.

He

delivered the figure

and was about to withdraw, but Nixon asked him to stay, then turned to Safire and murmured "thought and action." It was a phrase from another speech Nixon and Safire had discussed, one that contrasted the man of thought with the man of action; Haig, Nixon implied, was a man of action who counterbalanced Kissinger. But Nixon, Safire wrote, also wanted to include Haig "not as a messenger but as an adviser." Shortly thereafter, John Ehrlichman remembers, whenever Nixon was displeased with Kissinger on any account, he would have Haig brief him for five or six days, until Kissinger was softened up enough to be allowed to come back into the president's good graces. An NSC aide close to Kissinger recalls that "Henry would be an absolute wreck, he'd be close to a nervous breakdown because the president was meeting with Haig." Talk of urging Kissinger to see a psychiatrist was also rampant in the Oval Office simply another

—

instance of Nixon's

sadistic

treatment of his chief foreign policy

Ehrlichman wrote that Nixon told him to bring the subject up with Kissinger but "I could think of no way to talk to Henry about adviser.

psychiatric care."

Being in the White House was good for Haig.

He

"earned his star,"

)

SPY RING

54

jumped from colonel to brigadier general, in less than a year, a second star, making him a major general, in 1972. As Haig continued to rise in the White House hierarchy, Kissinger worried about his aide. "Can I trust Haig?" he would wonder, according to one

that

is,

and earned

NSC

staff

member who

talked privately with Kissinger.

No

one could

give the professor complete assurance on that score. In public, say in

Haldeman

front of the staff or

or Ehrlichman, Kissinger

would often

berate Haig for minor mistakes and seem to humiliate him, describing military officers as "animals"

who were

intricacies of foreign policy. (This

relationship portrayed in the

is

too

"dumb"

to

understand the

the view of the Haig-Kissinger

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein book

The Final Days.

We

Haig was the more what one source who knew both men

have learned that in private, however,

dominant character, acting

as

This source recalls angry, nasty screaming matches between the two men in which Haig threatened to punch Kissinger out, and Kissinger cowered. "Haig took the crap in public;

called "a schoolyard bully."

Henry took it in private," this source told us. Why would Kissinger take insubordination

in any form from Haig? "Haig could leak so many things about Henry's personal behavior or the secret way he was carrying out [foreign] policies. On an emotional level, Henry would ask himself, 'Do " But on the other side of the coin, "Haig I really want to cross him?' himself knew that if he wanted another star he had to get along with

Because, this source

insists,

Kissinger, too."

Kissinger and Haig shared

begun

in the early

many

secrets,

and

this

sharing had

days of the administration. Nixon had authorized

bombing campaign North Vietnamese and Vietcong havens and supply lines in neutral Cambodia. The air strikes continued for seven weeks, unknown to the American public until May 9, 1969, when William

(and Kissinger and Haig encouraged) an enormous against suspected

Beecher, the Pentagon correspondent for The

New

York Times, broke the

on the secret raids. Kissinger was on vacation with Nixon in Florida, and when they read the story both were enraged. During that day, Kissinger had four conversations with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover wrote story with a front-page article

memos

of his Kissinger calls to his senior

officials.

In the

first call,

Kissinger asked Hoover to use "whatever resources" were necessary to find Beccher's source, although Kissinger expected this to

be done

By the fourth call, Kissinger was vowing to Hoover that White House would "destroy whoever did this if we can find him,

"discreetly."

the

no matter where he

is."

Hoover,

in turn,

suggested a possible leaker, a

Nixon Orders a Burial former Harvard associate of Kissinger's staff,

55

who was

then on the

NSC

Morton H. Halperin.

Unfortunately, Kissinger had to agree with the assessment. Halperin had been in the Pentagon during the Johnson administration, and

had advocated angered

a halt to the

many

bombing of North Vietnam,

a strategy that

military and civilian defense officials in Washington.

When Kissinger announced his intention of bringing Halperin to the NSC, the proposed appointment drew criticism from General Wheeler, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs, from Senator Barry Goldwater, and from Director Hoover. To defend Halperin now, Kissinger believed,

would undercut his position with Haldeman and Nixon. By six that FBI managed to activate a tap on Halperin's home tele-

evening, the

phone.

The

very next morning, Alexander Haig went to Assistant FBI

Director William C. Sullivan with the names of three to

be tapped,

NSC

aides Daniel

I.

more

individuals

Davidson and Helmut Sonnenfeldt,

and Air Force Colonel Robert E. Pursley, military assistant to Secretary of Defense Laird; Pursley was distrusted by Haig and other military hardliners who scorned him as a dove on Vietnam and for being too close to civilian officials. Kissinger's deputy told Hoover's deputy that the taps on all four men were ordered "on the highest authority," and that the matter should be handled "on a need-to-know basis, with no record maintained." The desire for secrecy, Haig later testified in a civil suit, arose from his own experience in the Pentagon in the early 1960s when Hoover circulated through upper levels of the government a damaging report on Martin Luther King, Jr. which "just about blew the Pentagon apart." The Hoover report was "flushed all through the bureaucracy," Haig testified, adding, "I think that is the kind of concerns we had" about the new wiretapping effort in May ,

1969.

Ten days after his first meeting with Sullivan, Haig, accompanied by Kissinger, showed up at Sullivan's office to give him the names of two more NSC staffers to be tapped, and to read the first logs of the in-place taps. saying, "It trust except

is

memo

Sullivan's

clear that

I

of the meeting quotes Kissinger as

don't have

anybody

in

my

office that

I

can

Colonel Haig here."

During the next two years, Haig transmitted more names of the and newsmen whose phones were tapped at various times over a period of twenty-two months from May 1969 to February 1971. Some of those tapped had ties to high Democratic party powers such as Senator Edmund S. Muskie and former ambassador Averell Harriman, some were Republicans such as seventeen government officials

W

SPY RING

56

whom the White

speechwriter William Safire, and some were reporters

House

disliked.

Haig effectively became the operations officer of the wiretapping program. Periodically he would visit Sullivan, read dozens of wiretap summaries, and take some to Kissinger. In his biography of Haig, The GeneraFs Progress, Roger Morris described what happened after Kissinger had read the reports. Morris was at that time a fellow NSC staff member; he remembers the reports being kept in "a small, wired safe in the West Basement situation room," and wrote that while by mid1969 the wiretap reports were "an open secret among the NSC staff," no one but Haig and Kissinger knew who had been targeted. Nixon later wrote that he authorized the wiretapping to stop news leaks and to protect "national security." But no leakers were ever discovered, and the surveillance seemed openly political, especially since in several cases, such as that of Halperin and NSC staff member W. Anthony Lake, the taps were continued after the subject had left the government and had gone to work for Muskie, or had ceased to have any access to classified material. In any event, on February 8, 1971, Haig finally called Sullivan to order that the program be discontinued, and the taps were shut off two days later. The logs were not destroyed, however, and six months later Sullivan's copies as well as those from Haig's safe were placed at the instruction of Nixon into Ehrlichman's safe, where they lay for two years, a secret bomb waiting to explode. In later testimony, Haig would say that the wiretap reports were "an awful lot of garbage," and that whatever he had done had been on behalf of Dr. Kissinger but, as the FBI records show, over a two-year period Haig encouraged the collection of the garbage and pored over the results.

—

Considering their close linkage,

it

was no wonder

that, in thinking

December

1971, Nixon same breath. Moments after seeing the president on the afternoon of December 23, Fhrlichman and Haldeman briefed Kissinger. In his 1982 memoir. Witness to Power, Ehrlichman described Kissinger at this meeting as "calm, almost sleepy, as I recounted what we'd learned. His only

about Kissinger's reaction to the spy ring

would consider Haig

in

in almost the

reaction was to remark, almost indifferently, that the Joint Chiefs' liaison office

must be closed

at

once." Ehrlichman was surprised at the

had expected

huge eruption a tremendous problem for the President that week. He had been mounting elaborate, daily tirades about [Secretary of State] Bill Rogers; Nixon, Haldeman mildness of Kissinger's reaction, for

of emotion. Haldeman had told

me

"I

that

a

Henry was being

Nixon Orders a Burial

57

reported, was nearly to the point of firing Henry, just to end the wear

and

tear."

Although

it

seems clear that such sentiments were

just a

way

of venting presidential spleen, and that Nixon never seriously considit was obvious that in late 1971 Kissinger was under considerable stress and that the public exposure of the ill-fated tilt to Pakistan had severely strained his relationship with Richard Nixon. In the meeting with Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Kissinger displayed his diplomatic face, but when he returned to his own quarters he exploded into angry action. That very afternoon, he closed the JCS liaison office and ordered Welander's files and safes seized. Unfortunately, this order was not completely carried out. Though Kissinger got many materials, more remained in Welander's hands. In midJanuary, Welander was given a sea command and transferred away from Washington. Before he left, though, he was ordered by the secretary of defense to turn over materials from his safes. Instead, Welander asked Al Haig what to do, and an edict came down from Ehrlichman to hand over the remaining materials to the White House. Welander gave the documents to Haig, and Haig gave a packet of materials to an Ehrlich-

ered sacking Kissinger,

man

aide

who

placed

them

directly

in

Ehrlichman's

safe.

Today,

Ehrlichman says he never reviewed that material, and doesn't know whether he got all of what Welander had turned over to Haig, or if the batch was sanitized by either man. At the time, Ehrlichman points out, his main concern was the president's fiat to keep those files out of the hands of Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. The next casualty of the Kissinger explosion was Yeoman Radford. Within days of Kissinger's learning of Radford's involvement, the yeoman was hustled out of the capital, together with his wife and children, and sent to a new assignment at a Naval Reserve Training Center in Oregon. By the time he arrived at the base, Radford had figured out that he held a few good cards, and when an effort was made to yank his security clearance a move that would have effectively gutted his ability to work as a yeoman he played them. He threatened to cause trouble for the upper echelon if the Navy didn't continue his clearance, and the Navy quickly backed down. Nonetheless, a White Houseapproved tap was placed on his home telephone and remained in operation for the next six months. It caught two calls between Radford and Anderson. In the first, Radford declined an invitation to visit the elder Andersons. In the second, in May of 1972, Radford congratulated the columnist on winning the Pulitzer Prize for the "tilt to Pakistan" column. Some investigators tried to make hay of that call, saying it was

—

—

SPY RING

58

evidence of complicity in the evidence to the contrary

affair,

—dramatized

but there was overwhelming

by the

fact that the tap

was

month later, in June 1972, as completely useless. Ehrlichman had urged Nixon to hold off any questioning of Moorer until after Rembrandt Robinson had been interrogated, "but Nixon couldn't be patient." When Admiral Robinson, who was then stationed in San Diego, finally arrived for his interview on December 27, Ehrlichman wrote in his memoirs, the "self-assured" admiral was in full uniform "complete with gold braid and battle stars." In an unpublished diary entry, Ehrlichman recorded that Robinson admitted receiving "one set of trip papers" from Radford, "but denies animus." Robinson was "voluble, articulate, pushed all the right buttons"; those "buttons," Ehrlichman reported in his diary, included Robinson's assurance that he was "the president's man for four more years, etc.," and that Robinson expressed "concern for Moorer and the system." Ehrlichman ended the entry with the observation that Robinson "can't explain disparity" between his testimony and that of Radford and Welander. Ehrlichman later learned that Robinson had been to the Pentagon and had seen Defense Department general counsel Fred Buzhardt before arriving to see Ehrlichman; therefore, Ehrlichman now concludes, Robinson was primed for his questions. Confirmation that Robinson had been in the Pentagon on the day in question was provided to us by investigator Don Stewart, who had come across him in the halls and had been surprised to see Robinson running off to Buzhardt's office. Robinson managed to avoid the questions of both Ehrlichman and Stewart, and to salvage his sea duty. Later in 1972, however, he was posted to Vietnam, where he was subsequently killed in a helicopter crash in the Gulf of Tonkin.

discontinued a

The

Welander and the closing of the liaison office by Kissinger did not please Brigadier General Haig. Though it had been Haig who had initiated the investigation into the leak to Anderson, it was Haig who, in the hours following the moment when Kissinger learned of the espionage, conversely began a desperate, emotional attempt to protect Welander. That evening, December 23, Haig called David Young in a rage and accused him of impugning Welander on naught but circumstantial evidence. Young did not inform Haig that he and Ehrlichman had interviewed Welander or that a tape of that interview existed. From what Haig said and did not say, Young concluded that Haig had probably talked to Laird, and had thought that the only evidence of espionage was the Radford confession. The call shook the White House aide, but also fed Young's growing conviction that Haig was doing more firing of

Nixon Orders a Burial

59

—

than coming to the defense of an embattled fellow officer pressing his

own

that

he was

agenda, one that to Young clearly showed that Haig's

more with the JCS than with Kissinger or Nixon. Ehrlichman knew of Young's suspicions. "David Young suggested

loyalties lay

me that Al Haig had probably planted Radford to help the military spy on Henry," Ehrlichman wrote in his memoir, "but that did not seem logical to me because I assumed Haig had full access to Henry's to

papers and

files.

Young

insisted that

Haig constantly sold Henry out to

the military." Ehrlichman wrote that at the time he "discounted"

Young's allegation because he thought Young was a rising Haig,

rival

of the rapidly

and he knew that there was "obviously bad blood between

them."

was

That evening of December 23, while Haig berated Young, Kissinger also heating up the telephone wires. Ehrlichman was at home in

the midst of a Christmas party, he wrote,

when

Kissinger called to say

had fired Welander and closed the liaison office. Haig had obviously been talking to Kissinger, because Kissinger now asked if there was "hard evidence" of Welander's culpability. Ehrlichman told that he

Kissinger that there was a tape of Welander's confession, and that he'd

be glad to play

for Kissinger the next

it

"Would

he'd be there, and,

The

be

it

all

day in his

right

if I

office.

Kissinger said

bring Al Haig along?"

tape-play was arranged to take place just after the early

morning

senior-staff meeting.

Ehrlichman's next

David Young, in

some

when

I

who

detail. "I

call

at the

party was from "a badly shaken"

own

conversation with the agitated Haig

related his

suggested to Young that he not attend in the morning

played the tape for

Henry and Haig," Ehrlichman wrote

in his

memoirs.

Young agreed, but he remained troubled about the entire affair and December 24, he wrote a remarkable short memorandum for Ehrlichman that he hoped Ehrlichman would read

early the next morning,

before playing the tape:

JDE EYES ONLY

SAM Fri 12/24

John, 1.)

After reflecting on yesterday's events and particularly

night's call to

me by

Haig,

I

am

all

the

more convinced

that

last it is

SPY RING

60

now up

you and Bob [Haldeman] to protect Henry; i.e., him to say no to Haig. it is very 2.) Haig's change from enthusiastic retribution against Welander to outrage over the dismissal of Welander is odd. 3.) The imminent return of Adm. Robinson and the possibility that we might talk more with Welander especially about his to only

difficult for

"confidential relationships with Haig"

may be

the cause of Haig's

concern.

David

When

Ehrlichman played the tape

for Kissinger

A.M. the general said almost nothing, but "this time

calm," Ehrlichman wrote in his memoir.

"When

began striding up and down loudly venting

and Haig

at

9:00

Henry wasn't

so

the tape ended he

his complaints,"

among

Nixon now wouldn't fire Chairman Moorer. Ehrlichman quotes Kissinger as saying, "They can spy on him and spy on me and betray us and he won't fire them! If he won't fire Rogers impose some discipline in this Administration there is no reason to believe he'll fire Moorer. I assure you all this tolerance will lead to very serious

them

that

—

consequences for

this

—

Administration!"

Ehrlichman dutifully conveyed Kissinger's desire that Moorer be fired to Nixon when the president returned that morning from his annual physical at Bethesda Naval Hospital. "Ch JCS must go," read Ehrlichman's note of Kissinger's demand. Nixon had no intention of firing Moorer, for all the reasons noted earlier in this chapter, but neither did he have any intention of telling that to Kissinger right away, because he seems to have enjoyed watching Kissinger rant and rave and display his insecurity. Such Kissinger tantrums reinforced Nixon's confidence that he held the upper hand over his volatile national security adviser.

Later in the meeting, Kissinger crashed the gathering, though not happily.

"Mood

indigo," E.hrlichman cryptically noted of Kissinger's

in what Ehrlichman later wrote was "a very low, somber voice," Kissinger spread "gloom and doom" for the president and urged him to take some action. Nixon tried to joke with Kissinger and offer him some encouragement, but when Kissinger left the meeting, he showed no signs of having been relieved of his distress. As was his wont, Nixon now spent some time weighing the pros and cons of sacking Moorer, and by this process reaffirmed to himself the wisdom of the decision he had already made: He'd keep Moorer, albeit on a tighter leash. It was at this meeting that Nixon decided to

demeanor. Speaking

— Nixon Orders a Burial

61

send Mitchell to direct Laird to "keep quiet" about the spying. Mitch-

Nixon instructed Ehrlichman, was to tell Laird that public exposure would hurt Laird himself, the administration, and "the uniform," by which he meant the entire military apparatus of the United States. Laird was prepared to agree, even though he was in the process of learning rather completely what had happened in the liaison office something Nixon did not want him to do. He was receiving briefings from Defense Department general counsel Buzhardt, who oversaw the ell,

Don

Stewart investigatory team. Buzhardt had the polygraph exami-

and through the White House had somehow obtained the most damning evidence, Welander's confession, and had listened to it something Nixon did not know, and would have preferred not to have happened. This last piece of evidence was so secret that it was not even known to investigator Stewart, nor did Ehrlichman and Young, who had interrogated Welander, know that Buzhardt had obtained it. Later, the transcript of the Ehrlichman-Young-Welander interview was included in Buzhardt's report to Laird of January 10, 1972. It is not clear where Buzhardt got the transcript. However, Ehrlichman says that if Nixon had known about it, he would have been angry. As we shall shortly see, the Buzhardt report also contained nations of Radford,

—

some further

material.

Laird says today that he

still

has that report, to which was attached

the transcript of Welander's confession, but won't release

when Buzhardt brought him

it.

He

told us

copy of the tape, he listened to it. We asked whether Buzhardt had told him that Moorer was involved in the espionage, and Laird responded, "Ered Buzhardt told me yes, that

that

a

he [Moorer] was."

Buzhardt knew that

fact in his bones, because he was from the no longer wore a uniform, and he understood as well as Admiral Welander the degree of compulsion inherent in the chain of command. Originally from South Carolina, Buzhardt graduated from West Point just a year before Alexander Haig, and had known Haig at the academy and kept in touch with him afterward. Buzhardt wore spectacles, had slightly stooped shoulders, and spoke in a drawl that reflected his home county. Erom the academy he went into the Air Force and became a pilot, then left the military entirely to go to law school. A protege of the ultraconservative senator from his home state, Strom Thurmond, he then served as Thurmond's aide and developed close contacts with Thurmond's colleagues on the Hill, such as Representative Melvin Laird and Senator John Stennis, who also sat on defense committees, and with civilian and uniformed Pentagon officials. He went to the Pentagon in 1969 as a special assistant to the

military, too, even if he

SPY RING

62

secretary, in

and Laird chose him

as

Defense Department general counsel

August 1970. Since starting

at

the Pentagon, Buzhardt had been a fireman,

helping Laird and the military to stave off or limit the fallout from a variety of scandalous episodes including the

program against the

political

left,

the

My

Army's domestic spying Lai massacre, and the

publication of the Pentagon Papers. Buzhardt collaborated directly

with the White House Plumbers to find the source of news leaks including the Pentagon Papers leak. Buzhardt's brief in the Moorer-

was the same

had been in these other disasters: to determine the extent of the damage and then work to contain it. His secret report to Laird told the secretary more than what he was being told by the White House, and it verified Laird's good sense in having earlier prophesied to Nixon that the liaison office would cause more Radford

affair

as

it

harm than good. In January of 1972, Buzhardt suddenly decided that he needed to

much as Ehrlichman and Young had done two and even though he had their interview in hand. The ostensible reason for the reinterview was to verify independently the Radford information but as we shall see, there may well have been a hidden reason. While Stewart was on vacation in January of 1972, he received a call telling him to rush back to Washington, and when he got there, Stewart was told that he and Buzhardt would together question Welander, Stewart remembers being told by Buzhardt that this was being done "at the request of the president." That was untrue, but Stewart didn't know it, and was specifically not told that Welander had already confessed on tape to Ehrlichman and Young. Buzhardt and Stewart proceeded to interview Welander on January 7, 1972, and a report was interview Welander,

weeks

earlier,

—

written of the interview.

We have obtained the report. Welander again admitted that Radford brought him documents to which the admiral himself did not have access. He boasted to Buzhardt and Stewart that Radford "had great contacts amongst the White House people," that the yeoman had routinely picked up documents from NSC secretaries, and that Welander would photocopy the most interesting ones. Welander discussed Radford's activities on trips and confessed to tabbing and indexing the

papers that Radford stole before passing them to Moorer and then

some of the documents in his safe. Ihe material he provided to Moorer from the Kissinger and Haig trips, the report said, "was so sensitive that the chairman did not keep it overnight." In conclusion, the report added, "Admiral Welander locking

Nixon Orders a Burial stated

that

no one knew Radford was conducting

63

his

clandestine

operation" and that while he had "not praised Radford directly," he

had told the yeoman that the material "was important and significant and made many things understandable." Stewart recalls that Buzhardt pressed Welander on one document the memo on General the admiral may have received from Radford Haig's private conversation with South Vietnamese President Thieu.

—

Buzhardt insisted to Welander that "the president has to know" if Radford stole the document. "He [Buzhardt] hammered away at that," says Stewart, who didn't know at the time that Buzhardt was only using Nixon's name to pull the information out of Welander. The admiral then admitted he had gotten the memo from Radford, had

shown

it

to

Moorer, and then locked

it

in his safe.

The two most striking things about the reinterview of Welander are the matter of who ordered it, and the matter of what was not said in it. Both matters are interlinked. Ehrlichman says that neither he nor the president ordered such a reinterview, and in fact they were unaware of it at the time, and so was David Young. The president, Ehrlichman points out, was trying to bury the whole affair, and would have vetoed the idea of a further interview of Welander if he'd known about it. Nor would Kissinger have wanted it, and Laird says he didn't order it. Examining the two interviews of Welander side by side, we found that in the Buzhardt-Stewart reinterview Haig was mentioned several

— —

but all references to Welander's confidential dealings with Haig were omitted. There could possibly have been an innocent reason for this maybe Buzhardt did not bring up his friend Haig's

times in passing

name, and Stewart, unaware of what Welander had actually said to Ehrlichman, didn't see fit to introduce Haig's name. But that is unlikely. The most likely candidate to have ordered the reinterview was Haig himself. To see why, we must jump ahead in time to a congressional hearing in March 1974. The military spy ring was being investigated, and Fred Buzhardt was testifying. He had become the counsel to the president, and Alexander Haig was White House chief of staff. Buzhardt baldly told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7 that there was "no material substantive difference" between his reinterview of Welander and Ehrlichman's. Buzhardt waved a copy of his reinterview about

and if they had insisted on having a document, would have given that to them (rather than the EhrlichmanYoung- Welander interview). And the only person who would have benefited from that would have been his old comrade and current in the faces of the senators,

SPY RING

64

superior, Alexander Haig. Thus, the reinterview seems to have been conducted for the purpose of shielding the Welander tape of December 22 on the chance that some document of Welander's admissions would one day have to be disclosed. Queried by us about the military spy ring. Laird now says that Buzhardt's contemporary report to him was "full" of references to

Haig, but not because Laird specifically asked Buzhardt to look into matters concerning the general; rather, because in the Ehrlichman-

Young interview of Welander, as Laird put it, "Haig was drawn in through the back door on the thing. ... If you've listened to the tape you certainly know what the problem is." Laird told us he was "disappointed" by what Welander had to say about Haig, but added, "I

think that's enough to say." But

disappointed? "I didn't think

it

was

reluctance to elaborate. Laird then

we

fair to

made

it

pressed on.

Why

was he

the president." Despite his plain that he believed that

Haig knew what was going on and Laird emphasized that his disappointment was specifically with Haig not telling the president, and not just with the activities of Robinson, Welander, and Radford. "Are you saying you didn't think it was fair to the president that they were collecting the material?"

we

asked.

"Without Haig telling the president," Laird responded. "That he knew about the Radford situation?" we asked. "Yeah," Laird said.

Welander had confessed twice, to two different sets of interrogators, but that Chairman Thomas Moorer was aware of the espionage Robinwhat Radford, Moorer has always refused to acknowledge that son, and Welander stole amounted to more than a small whitecap on a vast ocean. Yes, he agrees he did see material collected by Radford on Kissinger's China trip, but he insists that he learned nothing new from those documents or from any of the others Welander confessed to conveying to him. "1 met with Kissinger frequently, every week, and went into his office, the two of us, and talked about these things, and I'm not aware of anything that I ever learned from Radford that I didn't know already, and let's leave it at that," Moorer told us in an interview. But why would Welander assert that Moorer had learned new things from these documents and had reacted as if the information was fresh? "[Welander] didn't know what 1 was doing either." Moorer challenged the assumption, made by Radford and Welander, that he benefited from the pilferings. "It wasn't a spy case or anything like that, You can go around, I imagine, in our bureaucratic system and if you were trying to prove, whatever in the hell you're trying to

—

.

,

.

Nixon Orders a Burial prove,

many

you can

find people who'll say everything.

people to say the opposite."

When we

I

can build up

tried to

just as

proceed with our

you can write any damn hung up the phone.

telephone interview, Moorer said, "Look thing you want about me," and

65

Before John Mitchell's death in 1988

.

.

we

.

laid

out the evidence for

Moorer's complicity, and asked Mitchell about his 1971 interview with

He

had been done before he learned the and that when he had determined that Moorer's denial was plausible, he had done so in the absence of crucial evidence to the contrary. "If I had heard that tape or heard it discussed, I would have had to follow an entirely different course than I did," he told us. After reading a copy of the transcript of the EhrlichmanYoung-Welander conversation, Mitchell concluded, "the president played a game with me" by not disclosing all the facts at the time Mitchell was sent to brace Moorer. "It sounds like I was set up," Moorer.

reiterated that

it

details of Welander's confession,

Mitchell said.

Why

would that happen? The answer, Mitchell thought, had

to

do

with Nixon's personality and style of governance. In 1971, had Nixon laid

out

all

the evidence for Mitchell and asked his advice, the ex-

attorney general said in 1988, he would have strongly pushed for the dismissal of Moorer. But that's not

what happened, and so Mitchell

reached the conclusion that Nixon never intended to seek his guidance

on how to handle the military spying crisis, because he already knew what he wanted to do. Mitchell based this conclusion on the fact that at the time of the crisis, Nixon sent Mitchell unencumbered by evidence to ask Moorer a few questions and obtain a cursory denial, because Nixon did not want to hear what he expected Mitchell would have to say had the attorney general become convinced of Moorer's

—

—

culpability.

—

The

president used

him

as a prop, Mitchell asserted in

through which Moorer could assert that he was clean. In the Moorer-Radford affair, then, Mitchell, one of Nixon's closest friends, said he was used by the president to justify the clearing retrospect

as a vehicle

of the admiral

Why

who

held one of the dirtiest secrets of the Nixon years.

Nixon

Welander tape? Mitchell thought it a deliberate refusal to face the facts. Mitchell agreed that had Nixon listened to the tape, or allowed an aggressive pursuit of all the leads on Welander's tape by his own investigators operating under Ehrlichman, or by Mitchell himself, the consequences would have been didn't

listen to the

was

severe. Severe for

and put Haig in

whom?

For Alexander Haig. "It would have taken

a different light

and probably gotten him the

hell

out

of there," Mitchell told us.

The

transcript of the

Welander interview, said Mitchell

after read-

SPY RING

66

ing

it,

bolstered his preexisting belief that "Haig was no great supporter

of Richard Nixon's; he was in business for himself."

However, Nixon was intent on burial of the episode, not exposure, and the actions he took to cover the traces of the matter ensured that Welander's admissions and his references to Haig were not explored. On only one point in his assessment of the affair can Mitchell be what Nixon would have done if he had learned what Welander faulted had to say about Haig, and on this, the former attorney general may have been blinded by his loyalty to Nixon. All the evidence suggests that the president would have dealt with Haig precisely as he dealt with Moorer: kept him around, and shortened his leash. This was the conclusion reached by John Ehrlichman. He imagined for us the scenario that would have unfolded if Nixon had listened to the tape, and he invented what Nixon would most likely have said to Haig: "I know what you're doing and I'm going to keep you in place anyway, but you better realize that I'm looking down your throat." Had Haig's relationships with Robinson and Welander been exposed, Ehrlichman contends, even if Nixon kept Haig on after 1972, he would never have been allowed to become chief of staff, as he did in May 1973. "I missed the boat on Al Haig at the time," Ehrlichman told us recently, after reviewing the transcript of his old interview with Welander, and David Young's worried early morning memo, and all the other warning signs. At the time, he muses, "I heard what Welander was saying, but I didn't fully realize its implications in terms of Haig's role as an agent for the Joint Chiefs." Rather, he was focused on Welander's confirmation of the spying, on Moorer's complicity, and on dealing with the Anderson leak. He now concludes that Welander, while at pains not to appear disloyal to a fellow officer, was trying to show Ehrlichman and Young the path to the truth about Al Haig. "The implications are that Haig was a prime source for the Joint Chiefs," Ehrlichman now understands. "I think it's pretty clear on the four corners of the interview with Welander that Haig had an enormous conflict of interest between his loyalty to the president, who had really sponsored him and fostered his career on the one hand, and the Joint Chiefs on the other. Haig had an impossible situation which I guess he resolved in favor of the Joint Chiefs." Ehrlichman is adamant that Nixon did not have any sense of what Welander had said about Haig, because the president had not reviewed either the tape or the transcript, and because the subject of Welander's veiled accusations didn't really come up in Ehrlichman's conversation with the president. "Nixon didn't want to know anything," Ehrlichman recalls. And so Nixon didn't know that the man he would later appoint

—

.

.

.

—

Nixon Orders a Burial as his chief of staff previously

67

had had "confidential relationships" with

those implicated in the military spy ring that had operated against

Nixon

in 1970-71.

Alexander Haig has repeatedly refused to comment or to answer any of our questions about the Moorer-Radford affair, or on any other subject, either orally or in writing. His assistant Woody Goldberg advised us that Haig is writing his memoirs and that everything he has to say about the Nixon years will be contained in that work.

By Christmas Day of

Nixon had made his decision and He would protect the backchannel that was so vital to his secret foreign policy, and in order to do so he would not disrupt the Joint Chiefs of Staff by publicly exposing or punishing their espionage. The following day Nixon left for a vacation in Key Biscayne, but not before issuing one last instruction to had begun

1971, Richard

Moorer-Radford.

his burial of

Ehrlichman about the a detailed security

crisis:

He

review of the

asked the domestic adviser to oversee

NSC.

This was a deliberate needle in the heart of Henry Kissinger, but Ehrlichman recalls that Nixon both wanted to insert it and to slip it in gently, for Nixon needed Kissinger as much as he needed Moorer. it done delicately. He did not want Henry to shop was being totally torn up by this process," Ehrlich-

"The president wanted feel that his

man

told us.

A

retired

Air Force colonel conducted the review, questioning

and reporting back to the president in February of 1972 that the NSC staff suffered from low morale. Kissinger later testified that he never saw the report because Haig got hold of it first "and told me there was nothing in it of significance." A few procedural changes were implemented, Haig was left in place, and the report was shelved. The crisis was past, and no one wanted to hear anything more about it. scores of Kissinger staffers

By

early

1972

Nixon's attention had turned to his upcoming

Chinese summit and his reelection.

The White House machinery was

geared toward those goals and the military spying episode, seemingly contained, quickly receded. Reflecting on those events, however, John

Ehrlichman says he now

realizes

how

vulnerable the White House was

to military surveillance. "All the cars that

we rode

in at the

White

House were driven by

military drivers," Ehrlichman recalls. "All of

the telephone calls that

we made

of

Camp

like

and out of our homes, in and out It was a little bit was there so plain nobody noticed it most in

David, were through a military switchboard.

the purloined letter.

It

68

SPY RING

We talked in the cars, we talked on our phones, we talked from Camp David, and thought nothing about it. This was part of the warp of the place, that you had military listening or in a position to

of the time.

listen to everything."

THE

WOODWARD-HAIG CONNECTION

WHEN

twenty-six-year-old Naval Lieutenant Robert U.

Wood-

ward arrived to take up a new and prestigious post at the Pentagon in August of 1969, he appeared to be just one more eager young lieutenant among the thousands already stationed in the capital. There was a war on, and junior officers were everywhere. Woodward was boyish-looking and just off the boat, having come from four years of sea duty as a communications officer, which followed four years at Yale and a childhood in the Chicago suburb of Wheaton, Illinois. He blended in with the rest of the fresh-faced young officers who hurried through the Pentagon's labyrinthine corridors and the mazes of offices in the White House complex. John Ehrlichman remembers that soldiers and sailors seemed so ubiquitous at the White House in those days, and blended so easily into the everyday hustle and bustle of government, that they were barely noticed. Woodward's arrival in Washington coincided with a turning point for the military and for Admiral Thomas Moorer, the chief of naval operations who was exerting ever more control over the operations of the executive body of which he was a member, the Joint Chiefs of

69

SPY RING

70

and which he would soon head. This was when the JCS was in the first blush of its astonishment at the way Nixon and Kissinger were seizing power and freezing out of the decision-making process in foreign and the JCS. policy the usual bureaucracies of State and Defense Woodward came on good recommendations, and found at the Pentagon his first skipper, Rear Admiral Francis J. P itzpatrick, who had become assistant chief of naval operations for communications and cryptology, and his second, Rear Admiral Robert Welander, who had similarly Staff,

—

become one of Moorer's other top aides. The Navy brought Woodward to the Pentagon ostensibly communications watch thirtv

traffic

as a

approximately

who manned

the terminals, teletypes, and classified communications center through which all flowed, from routine orders to top-secret messages. It was

sailors

coding machines

Navy

officer responsible for overseeing

at the naval

a sensitive position that afforded

Woodward

access to

more than

a

hundred communications channels, among them, according to Admiral Fitzpatrick, the top-secret SR-1 channel through which the Navy sent and received its most important messages, for instance, those which served to operate

its

covert global spy unit

known

as

Task Force 157.

SR-1 was the channel that Moorer provided to the White House when Kissinger and Nixon pushed him for backchannel communications capability. When Kissinger conducted his delicate and highly secret negotiations with China during 1971, SR-1 carried Kissinger's message back to his deputy Al Haig that the Peking mission had succeeded. In addition to being one of the officers charged with managing the

communications center. Woodward had another job. The young lieutenant was one of Moorer's specially selected briefing officers. A briefer is an officer who sees, hears, reads, and assimilates information from one or a variety of sources, and who conveys it succinctly and intelligiblv to more senior officers. Fhis was not only a highly prized assignment, since it often entailed close contact with very senior men who could advance a junior officer's career, but was also an enormously sensitive one, because the information conveyed was frequently top secret.

On

his briefing

assignment from Admiral Moorer, Woodward was

often sent across the river from the Pentagon to the basement of the

White House, where he would enter the offices of the National Security (>ouncil. I here. Woodward would act as briefer to Alexander Haig. 1 he Woodward-Haig connection, that of the briefer and the officer he briefed, is one that Woodward has labored to keep secret, for reasons that will become ever clearer as this book unfolds. Over the intervening years,

Woodward

has vehemently denied the existence of the relation-

The Woodward-Haig Connection

When we

ship.

71

informed Woodward that we had information Hnking

he issued his denial, saying, "Now what the hell are my ties to Haig?" He has even gone so far as to deny to us that he was a briefer at all and issued to us the following challenge: "I defy you to

him

to Haig,

produce somebody who says I did a briefing." However, that Woodward was a briefer and that some of those briefings were to Alexander Haig can no longer be in doubt. Admiral Moorer has confirmed to us what other sources had told us, that

Woodward had been

a briefer

and that

his duties included briefing

Haig.

"He was one

of the briefers," Moorer told us. Did he brief Haig?

"Sure, of course," Moorer said.

Woodward was

instructed to brief Haig

"because I was on the telephone with Haig eight or nine times a day" and there was even more to convey to Haig, so Haig could in turn relay information to Kissinger and ultimately to the president. "You don't have four-star generals lugging papers back and forth between the Pentagon and the White House," Moorer told us, you "pick up a juniorgrade lieutenant and tell him to do that." But Woodward was a full-

grade lieutenant, not a junior one, and especially selected for the job.

What

sort of briefing

would Woodward normally give

ably the same briefing he'd just given

me

at

to

Haig? "Prob-

nine o'clock," Moorer said,

referring to the daily 9:00 a.m. briefing attended

by the

CNO

and

other flag officers at the Pentagon.

Bob Woodward was outside Chicago

a senior at

W^heaton

when he decided

Community High School

to join the

Navy.

It

just

was 1961. To

attend one of the country's most prestigious schools, Yale University,

and Navy

ROTC

would provide one, so he signed up and passed the rigorous entrance exam. His father, Al Woodward, had seen such continuous duty in the Navy during World War II that Bob had had no glimpse of him from the time he was born in 1943 until 1946. When the senior Woodward returned home and pursued a career as a lawyer, he kept photos around the house that showed himself in uniform as a fighter in the Pacific, photos Bob later remembered as urging him toward the Navy. Bob Woodward was the oldest of Al and Jane Woodward's three children. When Bob was twelve, his parents divorced, and, in a move

he needed

unusual

at that

own

Woodward a

retained custody of the three

second time, to a

woman who

brought

three children into the household; later, the couple had a child

of their own, so his

time, Al

Then Al married

children.

her

a scholarship,

home.

Bob Woodward became

the oldest of seven children in

— SPY RING

72

Alfred E.

Woodward was

a leading citizen of

Wheaton,

a chief

judge of the county circuit court, and he expected his son to be an achiever.

Bob

fortable in his

tried

new

hard to meet these expectations, but was uncomfamily situation.

One

Christmas, Bob

Woodward

he was dismayed to discover that the presents that he and his natural brother and sister had received didn't told a Playboy interviewer in 1988,

measure up

to those given to his

looked up the prices of

was

said. "It

a

all

new

stepbrothers and stepsisters. "I

the presents in the gift catalog,"

moment of great

emotional distress for

Woodward

me and my

father

when I confronted him and showed him that the money he'd spent on them and on us was so dramatically out of balance. ... It was kind of sad, but the fact is that it's a very competitive world when two families are brought together that way. You end up feeling like an outsider in your own family."

Bob emulated Al in his Republican conservative and tried to do so in his attempt to play on the football team Al had been captain of the team at Oberlin College. Bob wasn't as athletically talented, and though he made it onto the team, he almost never played. In this matter, he told Playboy, he believed he had disappointed his father. "So I spent a lot of time up in my room as a radio ham, talking in Morse code around the world." He characterized the members of the ham radio club as classic "outsiders" with "sliderules on their belts." Woodward's portrait of himself as a tortured yet intellectual outsider is fine psychologically, but, as with so much that he has told interviewers of his own past, is incomplete and misleading. In fact, the adolescent Woodward was a definite insider, elected to the student council each year at Wheaton, the general chairman of the prom, one of four commencement speakers from his class "one of the greatest honors to be bestowed on a senior," the school yearbook describes this privilege and a member of several clubs (none of them for ham radio operators) as well as a member of several athletic teams and of the Nevertheless,

politics,

—

—

Honor Society. that commencement speech. Bob Woodward adapted

National For

his re-

marks from Senator Barry Cioldwater's book The Conscience of a Conservative, decrying the intrusion of the federal government into the lives of everyday citizens. Beside his name in the senior yearbook he printed the motto, "Though I cannot out-vote them, I will out-argue them." His girlfriend in high school, later his first wife, Kathleen Middlekauff, says he was popular, though "it wasn't the kind of popularity that made him liked by everyone. But he was known as an intellectual. You don't get elected to student government if you're an outsider."

The Woodward-Haig Connection

73

Middlekauff was a year behind Bob at Wheaton, and they kept up a correspondence when she moved with her family to New Jersey after her sophomore year. Bob matriculated at Yale in 1961, and Kathleen at

Smith College,

in 1962.

They continued

Bob Woodward attended

to see

one another.

Yale on a scholarship from the Naval

NROTC program was

The

Reserve Officers Training Corps program.

the most highly competitive "officer candidate procurement program"

about 10 percent of the applicants were accepted,

in that service; only

according to a 1965 guide. Approximately one thousand

new

officers

each year, and these were meant to supplement

were graduated from it those graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. The corps at Yale provided about seventy-five of these officers per year, and, says a 1958 Yale NROTC graduate, John McAllister, "the competition was very

and intense. You didn't go into the program as a lark." Yale NROTC students took one course per semester in some naval science such as engineering and propulsion, gunnery skills, military history, navigation, or naval operations and tactics. They also learned to march and drill in their uniforms, and had to attend six-to-eight-week training cruises each of three summers. Woodward's first summer was spent aboard an aircraft carrier, the second in a Marine and flight-training fierce

program, the third on

Midshipman Woodward was at

home

in the Ivy

Mediterranean. thoroughgoing Yalie

a destroyer in the

also a

who seemed

League atmosphere of the early 1960s. His major

concentrations were in history and English literature, and he was a

member

of Yale Banner Publications, the group that produced

campus publications except

for the daily

newspaper. As

was the chairman of Banner. During this period. Woodward wrote

remembers

as a

publishers in

deeply emotional work.

New

York, but

Woodward sloughed

it

was

a novel,

He

all

a senior, he

which Kathleen

sent the manuscript to

rejected. In his Playboy interview.

and "garbage," but said Wheaton and childhood and divorce and families in which all the innocent are wounded, because children are innocent, and it inflicts great pain." He said he later turned to journalism and its concern with the "external" world rather than have to continue his examination of the internal world that

it

contained

"all

off the novel as "silly"

the painful material of

represented by that novel. In that interview,

Woodward admitted

that

after its rejection he shed his literary ambitions somewhat and the notion of himself as an intellectual. He was actively political only as a a member may have set him

freshman, as

of the Yale Political Union. His conservative

stance

apart; after hearing

one day,

a political science professor called

Woodward speak

him

in class

a "crypto-fascist."

SPY RING

74

In the carefully constructed version of his

Woodward

own

life

change while

that he gave to

His tale was recorded by Leonard Downie, Jr., a colleague at the Washington Post, in the 1976 book The New Muckrakers. "I had a crisis at Yale when it became clear what the Vietnam war was really all about, but I never considered going to Canada or anything like that," Woodward recalled. The version he told David Halberstam three years later, condensed in The Powers That Be, was slightly different. In his last two years at Yale, Halberstam wrote. Woodward "had watched what was happening in Vietnam and he did not like anything about it. He thought for a time about going to Canada, but that was not the sort of thing a Wheaton interviewers,

recalled a sea

at Yale.

bov did."

John McAllister, the 1958 Yale NROTC graduate, notes that at campus was still relatively docile about the Vietnam War; McAllister knows, because as a Yale man and a Vietnam War veteran he took part in the first teach-in at the campus, in 1965. Yale in 1963-64 the

Andrew Coombe, a 1965 Yale NROTC graduate who knew Woodward at Yale, said there was no antimilitary activity on campus at the time Woodward claims to have undergone the sea change; in fact, Captain

he points out, the

ROTC

units

"and there was no big deal about Kathleen visited Bob

marched

at

one of the football games

it."

and didn't note a change in his attitude toward the war either. "He still remained verv conservative," she recalled, and was quite definite in her memories of this because she had changed. Kathleen said she had become a little involved with one of the most radical of campus organizations, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). "We used to have arguments about it. He didn't think that was something that was wise for me to be doing." Had Bob ever considered going to Canada to avoid the war? "Heavens, no," Kathleen Woodward told us. Rather than experiencing a crisis of the soul at Yale and veering to the

left, at

Yale

at Yale,

Bob Woodward became

ever

more

closely tied to the

establishment environment in which he had been raised. For decades,

ground for the Central Intelligence Agency; professors and athletic team coaches would openly seek candidates for the Agency. The Navy, too, considered Yale good hunting grounds on which to find future officers. Many graduates who did not go into the Navy or the CIA often filled important posts in the government or in business, and all of these constituted an "old boy network" to rival those of the graduates of Oxford and Cambridge among the ruling elite of Great Britain. In many ruling elites, a large proportion of the members are initiated into the networks through Yale had been a prime recruiting

The Woodward-Haig Connection secret societies.

Yale

life,

Legendary secret

75

been

societies have long

a fixture

of

mysterious, closed fraternities that enjoyed connections to

powerful government figures college days.

who had been members

Bob Woodward was "tapped"

to join

in their

own

Book and Snake

in

his junior year.

Though Book and Snake was not as well known as Skull and Bones, which counts George Bush among its members, "It is certainly among the top four," says Yale professor Robin Winks, author of Cloak and Gown, which documented Yale's ties to the intelligence community in the years 1939-1961. No evidence has emerged that Woodward was recruited from Book and Snake for the intelligence community, but from his year in Book and Snake he got a good grounding in an environment founded on secrecy, exclusivity, and the burnishing of old boy network ties. Founded in the 1880s and based on the Italian secret societies, those at Yale each have their own building, usually a windowless structure designed to keep its activities secret. The Book and Snake building is adjacent to the law school library, and across

from a cemetery, and has mausoleum.

Of approximately

a

marble facade that makes

it

resemble a

men in a class, the secret societies twelve men for each society. Meetings

twelve hundred

would tap about 10 percent, or were held twice a week, and on those occasions the chosen dozen would dine and drink together, or hold group discussions in which they would criticize one another or share secrets about themselves. In these societies, bonds were formed that lasted well after a member's departure from the campus. In 1965, Bob Woodward graduated from Yale. He owed the Navy four years of active duty, and although he never planned to make the Navy his career he thought he might write fiction, or study law as his father had done he determined to make the most of his assignments. His first post was aboard the USS Wright, one of two ships designated as a National Emergency Command Post Afloat. Woodward was circuit control officer on this rather odd-looking vessel, a refitted aircraft carrier with five enormous antennae that rose above an otherwise empty

— —

deck.

The

venerable publication y^w^'j Fighting Ships declared that the

Wright had "the most powerful transmitting antennae ever installed on a ship," the tallest of

which was 83

feet

high and designed to withstand

100-mph winds. The Wright's mission was to handle "world-wide communications and rapid, automatic exchange, processing, storage and display of command data," and to serve in times of emergency as a floating command post for top military officials and the president, according to a dictionary of naval fighting ships.

One

admiral described

SPY RING

76

it

as "a mini-headquarters facility in case of nuclear

the Norfolk, Virginia, naval base,

it

war." Stationed

at

mostly cruised the Virginia capes,

but occasionally ranged the entire seaboard from Maine to Florida, and

Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Rio de Janiero. Woodward aboard, the Wright was at anchor off Punta del Este, Uruguay, serving as a command center for President Lyndon Johnson, who was attending a Latin American summit confersometimes

as far south as

In April 1967, with

ence.

Woodward held a "top-secret crypto" security clearance and commanded the enlisted men who operated the ship's radio circuits. According to

its

skipper at that time, because the Wright had to be

readv for the president

at

any time,

it

was privy

to the

same informa-

Room at the White Fitzpatrick, who shortly rose to

House.

tion that flowed daily into the Situation

That

skipper. Captain Francis

CNO

admiral

communications and cryptology, remembers Wbodward "pushing traffic" on the ship, that is, supervising the processing of sensitive messages and coded cables that flowed into the ship from all points around the globe. According to Woodward, it was no big deal, and neither was the and served

as

assistant

for

security clearance, then or afterward at the Pentagon.

He

insists that

it

was "not an intelligence clearance at all. It's for the cryptographic machines and code cards that are used in communications." For nearly twenty years, ever since achieving fame for his reporting about Watergate, Woodward has said his naval career was an era of his life during which he was "miserable." Over the course of several interviews, he insisted to us that he was never anything more in the Navy than an officer in charge of men who handled communications .

.

.

traffic.

In evaluating

we must be

Woodward's

naval career

and

his

own

estimate of

as careful as in evaluating his career as a student,

Woodward's version has

all

it,

for

the hallmarks of a disinformation campaign

designed to hide, rather than to illuminate, the essential points.

Admiral Welander, who later commanded Woodward on another was a plum assignment for an officer fresh out of Yale, because though there were periods of relative inactivity, the Wright was nevertheless plugged into the same communications network that fed the White House. And former Green Beret Shelby Stanton, author of several books on military matters, says that "To go to a command ship right off the bat is a top job. It's like going to work for a corporation and being assigned right away to headquarters and getting the inside track. It sounds like he [Woodward] was being groomed. I hey would not have assigned just anybody to that ship." ship, says the Wright

The Woodward-Haig Connection Woodward

says he has "no idea"

ham when I was

11

how he was selected for the job. "I Maybe that was the connection."

was a radio It was while stationed in Norfolk in 1966 that he married Kathleen Middlekauff, his childhood sweetheart, after her graduation from Smith. Kathleen said she hated their tiny apartment and the regimentation of Navy life. Things were better for her on Bob's next assignment, which allowed the Woodwards a home in San Diego at the end a kid.

.

.

.

of 1967.

How Woodward made

of

that he

it,

is

had received

officer at a "jungle in the

obtained this second assignment, and what he

some confusion. He told Leonard Downie orders to go to Vietnam to serve as a tactical watch

the subject of

Mekong

command

Delta. "I

center" in the

knew

it

would be

Can Tho province located a death trap," Woodward

Downie. "To get out of that I asked to be transferred instead to a destroyer, which apparently pleased the Navy." Woodward's second version, given to Halberstam, was more detailed: The post would have entailed "going out in the canals of the Mekong Delta at night on Navy riverboats," and. Woodward believed, it almost certainly would have resulted in his death. So he looked for a way out. According to the Halberstam account, that way was "to imply that he wanted to go career Navy," and thereby earn assignment to a destroyer. T) do so, Halberstam's account says. Woodward "got hold of the Pentagon phone book and he made a list of everyone who might have some control over his destiny, and he sat down and wrote each of them a letter." T) us, Woodward reported a different set of events and motives. The proposed duty in the Mekong Delta had never been one that was directly in the line of fire, but was merely at an operations center; moreover, he wrote only one letter to get the orders changed, and that was to his Navy detailer, the personnel specialist who helps set assignments for each officer. "I didn't want to go to Vietnam," Woodward told us in 1989; "I wrote a letter and sat down and talked to the guy." told

Just a request to his detailer for a different assignment? "Correct,"

Woodward says. He also denied any attempt on his part to imply to the Navy that he wanted to be a career officer and thus needed a destroyer assignment, and he says no higher officers played a role in the decision to get

him such an assignment. Gene LaRocque,

Retired Rear Admiral

a flag officer in that era,

and promising to go career Navy could have made an impression, but that it was difficult to get out of such an assignment without help from a sympathetic senior officer, such as the captain of your ship. Retired Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll, Jr., says that writing letters

former assistant director of naval personnel

—

that

is,

the director of

all

a

SPY RING

78

—

was almost inconceivable in that era for a junior duty in Vietnam by relying simply on his detailer. "I was a detailer," Carroll insists, "and in almost every case you had to be adamant about the original orders unless a very senior officer

detailers

says

it

officer to get out of

requested a

man

for his ship or staff.

I

can't think of a situation in

which a detailer changed those kinds of orders on his own." Admiral VVelander says Woodward's story doesn't make much sense even though it was to Welander's ship, the USS Fox, to him, either that Woodward was sent when he didn't want to go to Vietnam. Furthermore, though Woodward served under Welander at sea, later socialized with him in Washington, and worked near him at the Pentagon during the period from late 1967 to mid- 1969, Woodward never mentioned to him any story of having his orders changed from Vietnam to destroyer duty. The Fox was a guided-missile frigate based in San Diego that made cruises to the South China Sea to provide targeting information in support of air strikes in Vietnam. Woodward, now a lieutenant junior grade, became the ship's communications officer, responsible for maintaining the ship's state-of-the-art electronics gear. The Fox accompanied aircraft carriers in the Tonkin Gulf and also provided communications

—

for highly classified intelligence operations.

According to Welander,

Woodward "had a lot of potential as a good officer," an opinion shared by the man who took over command of the Fox from Welander in May of 1968, M. D. Ward, and by the Navy itself, which gave Woodward second promotion in three years in July 1968, a promotion to him about a year ahead of the normal rate of

his

lieutenant that put

Navy personnel document. Woodward earned Navy Commendation Medal during this period, and its citation reflects "exceptional zeal and ingenuity in developing methods which

elevation, according to a a

enabled his ship to other units

...

.

.

in a

.

retransmit important operational messages to

more timely manner than normally

through regular communications channels." special talent that

and

in other

Woodward would

The

available

citation celebrated a

display frequently in later years

than military situations.

About six months before his four-year obligation was to conclude, on January 29, 1969, Woodward submitted a letter of resignation to the Navy, but when it came time to leave, in the summer of 1969, he didn't go. rhough he has consistently said to interviewers that he found the service oppressive, he nonetheless stayed on a year after he could have left.

Why?

y\ccording to

Woodward,

it

—

was red tape that kept him in place Navy that extended

1967 order signed by the secretary of the

all

The Woodward-Haig Connection

79

months of service because of the war in Vietnam. However, that 1967 NAVOP, as it is known in the Navy, was not a blanket extension of all service. Officers were to be extended "on a selective basis," and "subject to the needs of the Navy." In fact, Admiral Carroll says that the policy was administered only on a case-by-case basis. Once an officer had requested to resign, Carroll maintains, the Navy would have determined whether or not he held a crucial job or was about to be assigned to one, and if that were so, it would invoke the secretary's policy and extend him for another year; if not, he would normally be allowed to go. Al Woodward proudly says his son volunteered for that fifth year after the Navy offered Bob the prestigious assignment linking the Pentagon and the White House. "I don't think he was ordered. He had an option to do it or not, and he decided to do it," the senior Woodward told us. "I guess it was considered somewhat of an honor, and he accepted it." Did he accept because it was a White House assignment? "Right," says Al Woodward, who emphasized that "the assignment [Bob] had was in the basement of the White House." On the other hand, Kathleen Woodward had always believed that the Navy "made him stay for another year." She would have preferred for him to have left the Navy, for, as it turned out, Bob's assignment to Washington broke their marriage apart. However, informed of Al Woodward's view that Bob volunteered for the fifth year, Kathleen said it was possible that Bob didn't tell her the whole story about the regular officers to an additional twelve

assignment. It was 1969, and they had talked of moving to Berkeley after Bob was discharged; there, she could continue her studies in economics, and he could write. "I was going to make money so that my husband could write," she remembers. But that dream evaporated when Bob announced quite suddenly that he was taking a "good assignment [that] involved this work at the White House." Rather than spending that

year in California or in any of the several other locations among which, Kathleen says, he was allowed to choose, he said he was going fifth

Washington. After Bob

Kathleen remembers, "I tried to visualbasement of the White House." "I can't conceive of a case in which a man was given an option of choosing his assignment in a situation like that," Admiral Carroll comments; "It could only happen if his commanding officer or someone

to

ize

what he was doing

left,

in the

from the Pentagon requested him for a particular assignment." In any event, the transfer to the capital was the effective end of Woodward's first marriage. Kathleen visited him once in Washington during the latter part of 1969, and left for France shortly thereafter for

SPY RING

80

a year of

study abroad. During that year, they divorced. Today, as

Kathleen Woodward, she in

a professor at the University

is

Milwaukee, where she

is

also

head of

The Center

of Wisconsin, for Twentieth

Century Studies. Kaithleen remains fond of Woodward, has maintained him over the years, and considers herself still "loyal to extremely ambiBob." Nonetheless, she assesses him as "ruthless immensely controlled. All of his passion has been channeled tious

contact with

.

.

.

.

.

.

into his ambition."

When Woodward

arrived in Washington he

went on the

staff of

Admiral Moorer, together with his two former skippers, Fitzpatrick

and Welander; he reported to Fitzpatrick through Commander John J. Kingston, chief of all the watch officers, and supervised the people manning terminals in the CNO's communications center. It was Woodward's job as communications watch officer to route incoming messages to the proper person

on the

staff of the chief of naval operations or the

secretary of the Navy, and to be aware of particular sensitive areas or

"hot spots" about which the CNO or his flag officers must be alerted. Most of the messages were classified, and some were top secret. They also included, according to Kingston, "personal, exclusive-type sages.

A

lot

this, that,

of negotiations at the time.

or the other thing.

It

was

all

What

the

mes-

Navy thought about

in personal

messages between

flag officers."

According to Charles Hunnicut,

who

held a similar position to

Woodward's at that time, because of the many terminals and the messages coming and going, even from the special adjoining room for secure voice communications to the White House, "There was something different happening all the time. You had stuff coming in from all over the world. You knew what was going on in the world for real." These particular watch officers were at the nexus of a constant stream of communications. They presided over its acquisition and transmittal, they reviewed the raw traffic that flowed into and out of the CNO's office to and from the fleet, the CIA and the NSA, the State Department, and the NSC. Most watch officers, however, had very little direct contact with the White House; occasionally they would be in touch with the White House Communications Agency Kingston says that someone would be assigned to drop off a package at the perhaps once a week, and that this never involved going into the basement offices of the White House or the NSC. Woodward insists that he loathed the assignment. To Leonard Downie he said the job was "awful and boring ... I was miserable." In an interview he told us that the courier duty to the White House

—

WHCA

The Woodward-Haig Connection amounted

work"

to "scut

in

81

which he sometimes carried "some docuand bolts. It's not substantive."

ments or a folder. Asked if he had any responsibilities in his fifth year in the Navy beyond that of the ordinary communications watch officer, Woodward said, "No. Nothing at all." Did he perform as a briefing officer? "Never," he shot back. It was at this point that he issued his challenge defying us to produce anyone who confirmed he did a briefing. "Have you got somebody who says I did a briefing?" Assured that we had, Woodward pushed harder. "Who says that? What sort of people?" We reminded him that throughout his career as a reporter he had steadfastly refused to disclose his sources, and refused to tell him ours, but assured him that his full denial of the briefing assignment would be published. "I wasn't [a briefer]," he insisted. "It never happened. I'm Call up and find looking you in the eye. You have got bad sources. out who does the communications watch officer work now and find out .

.

.

Strictly nuts

.

if

they're briefers,

Woodward

if

they give briefings.

It just isn't

.

.

so."

communications watch officers do not normally give briefings, but the job title can be misleading. L. Fletcher Prouty, retired Air Force colonel and one of the top briefing officers for the JCS from 1955 to 1963, says he never formally held the is

partially correct, for

of briefing officer, because "Briefer is not a job description, it's something that somebody does. I had the title of chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and you wouldn't know from that that I was a briefer. It's easy to hide behind words and say title

.

somebody

didn't

.

.

do something because they didn't have

a title,

but

it's

meaningless."

But of course. Admiral Moorer, as noted above, has confirmed that a briefer. Moorer described for us the qualities required of briefers such as Woodward. First, the briefer "had to be articulate"; then, "you have to be able to stand on your two feet without beating around the bush and taking up people's time. Give the information out, that's all. Some people are good at communications and decoding messages and some people are good at standing on their two feet in front of the admiral and giving the summary of the latest messages that came in during the night. And Woodward could do

Woodward was indeed

.

.

.

that."

To be a briefer was "a marvelously challenging job," recalls Dr. William Bader of the Stanford Research Institute, who served as a Navy briefer in the 1950s and 1960s. He notes that the old boy network

Navy briefers includes Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana and Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, former deputy director of the CIA and head of the NSA. It was an incredibly important job for a young man

of former

SPY RING

82

Bader says, "very heady business." He has always been amazed by the Navy's capacity to find good men and bring them "into the system" through "a very interesting and intricate job." Bader in his twenties,

describes the task as part presentation of data, part entertainment.

"They considered

that you had the intelhgence and analytical ability amounts of information and process it, collate it, and present it. Perhaps 'entertaining' is a bit flip but they really wanted you to have a certain amount of the Dan Rather in you." Most briefers, Bader says, continued to stay in touch with one another through the old boy network; it was through this network, Bader says, that he learned that Woodward "was one of us." Fletcher Prouty, himself a former briefer, described in his book The Secret Team that, within the government's power centers, "one of the most interesting and effective roles is that played by the behind-theto take vast

—

scenes, faceless, ubiquitous briefing officer"

who

sees the important

people "almost daily." Moreover, the briefer "comes away day after day

knowing more and more about the man he has been briefing and about what it is that the truly influential pressure groups at the center of authority are trying to

tell

these key decision makers." Prouty recalls

was the focal point for contact between the CIA and the Department of Defense in cases where the military was involved in

that he

covert operations; at the time he held the job, he considered himself

"perhaps the best informed liaison officer

among

the few

who

operated

in this very special area."

Prouty the briefer described his formal job as that of liaison officer. reflecting on his interview with Woodward, described Woodward's job in Washington as a "communications liaison officer between the Pentagon and the White House." In 1983, Woodward spoke to

Downie,

reporter

Jim Hougan, then researching

his

book

entitled Secret Agenda.

Hougan had learned of Woodward's briefing assignment, and asked him about it. "He admitted to me that his assignment included a responsibility to brief," Hougan told us recently. "He would not, however, identify the people he did brief." In his later conversation

with us, Woodward would not even admit to having acted as

a liaison

But some senior officials at the Pentagon knew of Woodward's assignment, including former secretary of defense Melvin Laird, who told us, "Yes, I was aware that Haig was being briefed by Woodward," and Laird's aide at the time, Jerry Friedheim, who agreed that Woodward "was one of several briefers. Briefers were identifiable. That's

officer.

how they came

to the notice of senior officials."

However, Woodward's briefing assignment was kept secret from his fellow officers and from some of his superiors. "If he did it," fellow

The Woodward-Haig Connection watch

Hunnicut avows, "he did

officer

reHeving me. Because he reHeved

me

knew Bob Woodward and he had

it

other than

83

when he was

personally on almost every watch.

the same job that

I did, and I had none of those duties, and none of the other [communications watch officers] had it either." Woodward's superior, Kingston, is more circumspect: "Anything is possible," he told us in regard to Woodward's briefing assignment, "but if he did those briefings I didn't know about it." Admiral Fitzpatrick says if Woodward did White House briefings, "he did it behind my back," but admits that he saw very little of I

Woodward directly while at the Pentagon, principally only when Bob came into Fitzpatrick's office to say hello to another junior officer with whom he'd served on the Wright. Even Admiral Welander says there was "never any indication" that Woodward briefed anyone in the White House, and reminds us that his office was a mere forty to fifty feet from Woodward's in the Pentagon. That Woodward had a secret assignment and that it was kept from his fellow officers and from some of his superiors argues that his true assignment was extremely sensitive. That he would go to such lengths to deny having briefed Haig further argues that the sensitivity about his secret assignment might well have to do with precisely this point:

Woodward briefed Haig. We can't prove it, but the evidence suggests that Woodward might well have served as a human backchanthat

nel

between Haig and the JCS, carrying information so

sensitive that

it

could only be conveyed by a specially selected briefing officer.

Woodward was an

insider in high school

and

college, but insists to

recent interviewers that he was an outsider; he

tells one story about one interviewer, another to a second; he says at one time that he wrote letters to everyone he could find in a Pentagon phone book to get out of duty in Vietnam, and at a second time that he only spoke to his detailer; he was a well-placed junior officer who briefed Admiral Moorer and other senior military officials at the Pentagon and at the White House, yet insists that his military career was boring and that he couldn't wait to get out. Why does Woodward dissemble? Why hide your light under a

dissent during the

Vietnam War

—especially

bushel basket

if it is

to

a fine, smart, highly trained, well-

downplay an insider's school career? Why discount or refuse to acknowledge the sort of military assignments about which others would like to be able to boast? Woodward's description of his life prior to the time he sprang into fame as the investigative reporter of Watergate resembles the cover identities and complete past histories chosen by moles in tales of espionage: It is drab

connected light?

Why

SPY RING

84

to the point of the subject vanishing into the wallpaper.

Woodward

seems to cover his past associations with shadows in order to conceal strong, ongoing connections to the military hierarchy, and to protect people in that hierarchy who are or have been his journalistic sources. The confusion about Woodward's life extends even into the early stages of his journalistic career.

Navy

in

August 1970. His

of service

—four

ward only served

He

received his discharge from the

NROTC contract obligated him to six years

years' active, five years.

two

The

years' inactive reserve

—but Wood-

sixth year remains a mystery;

it

may

be that the reserve obligation was waived because Woodward served years on active status, but that is unclear. We asked Woodward if

five

was waived, and he said, "I don't know what happened. had an option about going into the reserve or not and I chose not to." That summer Woodward was accepted at Harvard Law School and thought briefly of attending, but did not do so. He told Downie that he turned to journalism because "newspaper work was something I thought I could do right away." With no reporting experience, he nonetheless managed to get an interview with Washington Post metropolitan editor Harry Rosenfeld, who gave him a two-week try out without pay it was Woodward's idea. None of what he wrote during that period was printed, and the tryout was terminated. Woodward was then hired at the Montgomery County Sentinel, a suburban Maryland weekly. Woodward told Downie that Post editors "helped me get a job" at the Sentinel, and in 1987 upped the ante by telling Miami Herald reporter Ryan Murphy that Rosenfeld had written a glowing recommendation that helped him land the suburban job. "I distinctly remember when he was telling me about the Rosenfeld letter," Murphy recalls. "He [Woodward] described it as if it were a really superlative, high-praise letter." Rosenfeld, who is no longer with the Post, says he cannot remember writing such a letter for Woodward and denies playing any role in helping Woodward get a job at the that sixth year

But

I

know

I

—

Sentinel.

Roger B. Farquhar, who hired Woodward for the Sentinel, says, "I got no word from the Post at all" about Woodward. He picked Woodward from forty applicants because Woodward was a Yale man, because he seemed an eager beaver Woodward stood in the doorway and declared, "I want to work here so much that I can taste it," Farquhar recalls and because Woodward produced a Navy document that praised his abilities. In an interview with us in 1984, Farquhar described this document as a letter from a senior officer who "just raved" about Woodward, "particularly how hard he worked, how he had the work ethic."

—

—

The Woodward-Haig Connection

85

Asked about his hiring at the Sentinel, Woodward said that a "number of people," perhaps one being Rosenfeld, suggested it was a good place to start his career. Rosenfeld, Woodward recalled, "may have called" Farquhar, "or written him a letter. I don't remember. It's possible I may have had a recommendation from somebody in the Navy." Told that Farquhar said he saw a letter from a Navy officer, Woodward responded, "I don't think that's true. I may have shown him my fitness report, or something like that. ... I don't think there was a .

.

.

letter."

After our interview with Woodward, and after seeing some of our written materials, Farquhar denied that he had been

shown

and personnel form a letter

said the document Woodward had shown him was a from Woodward's service record that contained the statement about his "incredible" work habits. He also told us that he'd had no recent contact with Woodward on the matter. After one year at the Sentinel, Woodward joined the Washington Post on September 14, 1971.

After briefing Moorer at nine in the morning in

Woodward would

1969 and

1970,

often travel to the West Basement offices of the

White

House, carrying documents from Moorer, and would then deliver these and brief Alexander Haig about the same matters he had earlier conveyed to Moorer. Among those who saw Woodward enter Haig's room was Roger Morris, then a

from

member

of Kissinger's

his position in protest at the

NSC

staff.

(Morris later resigned

bombing of Cambodia.) When

Woodward began to appear in the newspapers in the 1970s, Morris recognized him as a young Navy officer he had seen going into pictures of

Haig's office. "I learned through friends that this was the same

who had been one

guy

of Moorer's aides, and had worked at the Pentagon

and so forth, and knew Al Haig well, and had been back and forth in the West Basement in those early days," Morris told us recently. Morris told us that Haig's briefers "came from all the services, from the Air Force, the Army, as well as the Navy, and of course there were guys from

CIA

and

NSA, who

gave these kinds of briefings." In the

"Haig took all of the military briefings and intelligence briefings" personally, "on a very frequent basis" because of the ongoing war in Vietnam. For the NSC, Kissinger had his own office, and Haig shared one with Lawrence Eagleburger; other personnel were in the large bullpen area of the Situation Room, where they could monitor incoming cable traffic and the hot line to Moscow, guard safes containing highly classified material, and send or receive

early days, Morris recalled,

.

.

.

SPY RING

86

the Nixon-Kissinger backchannel messages. small conference

"Haig took

room

The

briefing area

was

a

adjacent to this bull pen. Here, Morris says,

his briefings

from people

like

Woodward always behind

closed doors," most often alone, but sometimes with a military aide; after these briefings, Haig would then "delegate various things and act on whatever he got from [the briefer]." In addition to being briefed by the military, Haig was also briefed by the FBI and the CIA. "He was probably the conduit, which gave him a great deal of information 90 percent of the intelligence material. ... It was very, very heavy traffic." As a result of these frequent briefings, Morris says, Haig "became not just a conduit but he became an active liaison and a kind of representative of and to the Joint Chiefs and to the [armed] services .

.

.

themselves."

The NSC's staff secretary at the time, William Watts, told us that made it "very clear, very early" in his tenure at the White

Colonel Haig

no one should tread on "his turf," which was the Pentagon and all military information. Watts had a direct line from his office to Air Force Colonel Robert Pursley, military aide to Laird. Haig openly disdained Pursley by name, but was annoyed that Watts had such direct access to Pursley. Haig, Watts says, "was just very effective at establishing the fact that he was the guy who was going to be dealing He was keeping his line over there very much with the Pentagon. open, and he was very effective at doing that." Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr., was then forty-four and a career army officer. His early childhood had been spent in a Catholic, upper middle-class suburb of Philadelphia, where his father was a lawyer. The father died when his namesake was ten, and this caused financial hardships for the family. An uncle became Haig's early benefactor, and from then on, throughout Haig's career, he found and nurtured mentor-protege relationships with powerful men. Haig entered West Point at the age of twenty in 1944, after having previously been rejected by the academy. The course had been condensed into three years because of the war, and in 1947 Haig graduated 214th in the class of 310. First Lieutenant Haig was sent to Ibkyo in 1948, and became aide-de-camp to General Alonzo Fox, deputy chief of staff to Douglas MacArthur, the supreme Allied commander. Haig

House

that

.

later

.

.

married Fox's daughter.

In Japan, Roger Morris noted in his biography of Haig, the

young

and professional whims of his superiors," especially MacArthur, who viewed himself as a sovereign and the ultimate ruler of Japan, and to maneuver from within among the jealous ranks of MacArthur's courtiers. "In that sense, Haig officer learned

how

to cater to the "personal

The Woodward-Haig Connection was given

a taste of

both the

pomp and

87

the poHtics of a veritable

presidency two decades before he joined the White House staff,"

Morris concludes.

When war

broke out in Korea, Haig went to

of Mac Arthur's favorites, General in the

it

as

an aide to another

Edward Almond. Other assignments company

1950s included three years in Europe, a stint as a

commander

at

West Point and one

as

an executive officer

War

at

Annapolis.

what Morris described as an "undemanding" master's degree program in international relations at Georgetown University. Advanced degrees In 1959, after attending the Naval

College, he enrolled in

were thought desirable to enable an officer to enter the upper ranks. Haig's 1962 master's thesis was a virtual blueprint of the officer and politician he would become. The topic was the role of the military man in the shaping of national security policy, and he called for "a new breed" of soldier

terms of

its

who

could "continually appraise military policy in

political implications." In his tour d'horizon of the relation-

ships between the civilian and military authorities in the United States

Haig criticized past "civilian interference" and declared that the civilians "must consistently include vital military considerations" in dealing with political matters. General George Marshall erred in the other direction, Haig wrote, bowing too far to too many political considerations of the civilian leadership in World War II. Haig deplored Truman's recall of since the turn of the century, in

military decision-making,

MacArthur

as further tipping the scales to the side of the civilians. Yet

he was particularly laudatory to the

man who would

shortly

become

Robert McNamara, while another future boss, Henry Kissinger, appears in a gracious footnote as a keen academic strategist.

his boss, civilian

To Haig, in his thesis, the State Department's dominance in foreign affairs must be ended; moreover, the military's many voices should be distilled into one a single presidential adviser, more influential than the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who would give his counsel directly and continuously. This would give the Pentagon a "seat at the pinnacle" of government. Haig fretted that there were currently several levels of people keeping the military from the president's ear; that had to be eliminated. "There is a growing danger that future policy may lack the military contribution called for by the challenge that confronts our nation," Haig wrote in summation, and this was a challenge that would have to be met by civilians assisted at the highest level by military men "skilled in the management of violence." General Fox, although by then retired from the military, still had ties to McNamara, and he backed Haig's first posting to the Pentagon after his son-in-law had earned his master's degree. It was in the

—

SPYRING

88

International and Policy Planning Division, and although Haig's

title

sounded impressive, he was just one of a multitude of middle-rank officers who shuffled between such desk jobs, making the Army's contingency plans for Berlin and for an invasion of Cuba. Working in the Pentagon, Haig came in contact with several men he had known since West Point days, such as Fred Buzhardt, who was then on the staff of

Thurmond. summer of 1963, Haig

Senator Strom

In the halcyon

was, in Morris' words,

from the army's oblivion" by "the most decisive patronage of his career," that of Cyrus Vance, then secretary of the Army, through Vance's counsel, Joe Califano. Califano put him to work on assimilating into the army some of the Cuban exile veterans of the Bay of Pigs, discovered that Haig "was more of a workaholic than I was," and touted him to Vance as one of the "Maxwell Taylors of tomorrow." Vance, Califano, and company were up to their neck in brushfire problems in Central and South America in the year Haig worked for them, and took Haig along in 1964 when Vance was promoted by McNamara to be deputy secretary of defense. In the next year, as the United States was drawn increasingly into the maelstrom of Vietnam, Haig was a small cog in the decision-making hierarchy of the Pentagon. To his bosses, Vance and McNamara, he declared that the military men must not be excluded from "key decision-making" on the war, urging in a memorandum that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs should attend the weekly meetings "of high-level advisers at the White House." In June 1965, Haig went off to the Army War College, and was replaced in his post by an Air Force officer named Alexander P. Butterfield, with whom he became friends. Eleven months later, Haig headed to Vietnam for his first true battle command. It proved in retrospect to be a great time to get out of the Pentagon, for those who remained were later tarred by their association with disastrous war policies. Battalion Commander Lieutenant Colonel Haig and his troops saw heavy action in the spring of 1967, and Haig was cited for bravery. In 1968 he returned to the United States, was promoted to full colonel, and went to West Point as deputy commander of cadets, the numbertwo position at West Point. In late 1968, he received the call from Henry Kissinger summoning him to a position in the Nixon White House. "rescued

We it

asked

.

.

.

Woodward when he

was "some time

circumstances?

first

met or

"I don't.

of staff by that time?

first

talked to Haig; he said

remember the Had Haig become White House chief "Don't know. Don't know," Woodward re-

in the spring of I

don't."

1973." Did he

The Woodward-Haig Connection

89

sponded, and reasserted that "the idea that I had a tie to him [earlier] is false." And he wouldn't answer any other inquiries about his dealings

with Haig after that spring 1973 time "because it's complicated." We'll skip over for the moment what has long been suspected

—

that

Haig was "Deep Throat," the source that gave to Woodward nearly every investigative break on the Watergate affair and was immortalized and jump ahead to the controversy surroundin All the President's Men ing a later book by Woodward and his Post colleague, Carl Bernstein, The Final Days, in which the investigative reporters chronicled the last fifteen months of the Nixon presidency. Articles and reviews in 1976 and since that time have wondered whether Haig was a key source for that book, because on page after page the authors reconstructed what they said were White House meetings and conversations of the most intimate and sensitive kind, many of which involved Haig. Since there is rarely any attribution of sources in the book, it is impossible to state conclusively who those sources were but some passages include private scenes between Nixon and his chief of staff, Haig, in which the thoughts and feelings of both men are described. Nixon was not interviewed, and Haig has denied being a source for that book or for any later material that Woodward has written about him. Upon publication of The Final Days, Haig was supreme commander of Allied Forces in Europe, and he sent Nixon a cable that want to assure you that I have not contributed in any way read: "I to the book." Conservative journalist and author Victor Lasky got a letter from Haig in April 1976 that contained a similar denial; Haig told Lasky he had rebuffed Woodward's strenuous effort to get him to talk. In the letter, Haig told the story, repeated elsewhere, that Woodward flew to NATO headquarters in Europe hoping for an interview, but that the general, with a witness present, refused to have anything to do with the reporter. This story of a public rebuff to Woodward has been repeated to us by associates of both men as the quintessential proof that Haig refused to have any dealings with Woodward. David Korn, a longtime personal friend and former special assistant to Haig, says "Woodward came to see him [Haig] in Brussels and he threw him [Woodward] out. He refused to talk to him ... I heard it directly from Haig. You know, sometimes people exaggerate, but he [Haig] claims he never wanted to talk to him [Woodward]." Korn says Woodward was "persona nonwelcome, non grata, as they say, in Haig's entourage," but acknowledges that he may not know the whole story. "Now if there were three faces of Haig, that's a different story," he adds. "You know, [Haig] telling me one thing and dealing with Woodward on the other hand."

—

—

.

.

.

SPY RING

90

The

scene of

Woodward

jetting to Brussels

but being forced by

a

stonewalling Haig to cool his heels and then getting tossed out of the

was simply theater, acted for public consumption. Haig might not have said a single word to Woodward at that moment, but he had talked to him copiously at other times. Asked if Haig talked to Woodward for The Final Days, attorney Leonard Garment, Haig's colleague in the White House during the final days, who acknowledges speaking to Woodward for the book, told us recently, "Of course Haig talked to Woodward." Garment was aware that the Haig- Wood ward connection dated back to the days when Woodward had been a naval

general's office

officer.

Lawrence Higby had been a principal aide to H. R. Haldeman, and stayed on after Haldeman resigned and became a colleague of Haig's during the last months of the Nixon presidency. In a recent interview with us, Higby recalled getting a call from Woodward requesting an interview for The Final Days, and, before consenting, "I

asked Haig, and he said, 'Oh, yeah. You ought to talk to them. over now, anyway.'

Bob Woodward was certainly

It's all

"

right:

was "complicated."

His relationship to Alexander Haig

BOOK TWO

GOLDEN BOY

THE PRESIDENT'S

PRMTE EYE

AS

Richard Nixon's predilection for secrecy and intrigue were the

hallmarks of his operation of foreign policy, so they also became the distinguishing characteristics of certain actions he pursued in the

domestic arena.

He

entered the White House with deep suspicion of

left, the opponents he had fought throughout his from the supporters of Jerry Voorhis in 1946 to the partisans of Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential campaign, and

his

"enemies" on the

political career,

who

he believed

made up

the bulk of the bureaucrats in the govern-

ment. Henry Kissinger, the former Harvard professor

who moved

easily within the Eastern Establishment, recognized that

Nixon

felt

"shunned" by that same group, and, he wrote, "this rankled and compounded his already strong tendency to see himself beset by enemies." Chief of Staff H. R. "Bob" Haldeman similarly wrote that

Nixon "would despair at his lack of natural charisma, and realize that if he was to win he would have to attack and destroy the enemy." Whoever seemed to be on the opposite side, Nixon pursued, often with what Haldeman observed were "petty, vindictive orders." If Nixon had endured a time of negative press coverage, he would seek to bar all

93

GOLDEN BOY

94

reporters from Air Force One. If a senator

made

a

speech against the

Vietnam, Nixon would issue an order Haldeman: "Put a twenty-four-hour surveillance on that bastard." Why a surveillance? To obtain deleterious information that could

president's policies in regard to to

be used against the senator. Nixon liked that sort of secret, intriguerelated intelligence, and fostered an environment within the White

House

that put a

premium on

it.

The

president believed that the

—

domestic information-gathering arms of the government the FBI and other federal policing agencies could not be counted on to undertake

—

had in mind. J. Edgar Hoover, Nixon believed, had files on everybody, but even though Hoover often cooperated with Nixon, the FBI director was reluctant to release any of those files to Nixon even after he became president, just as reluctant as Director Richard Helms would be in 1971 to release the CIA's Bay of Pigs files when Nixon instructed him to do so. And so, just weeks after Nixon's inauguration, the president directed White House counsel John Ehrlichman to hire a private eye. "He wanted somebody who could do chores for him that a federal employee could not do," Ehrlichman says. "Nixon was demanding information on certain things that I couldn't get through government channels because it would have been questionable." What sort of investigations? "Of the Kennedys, for example," Ehrlichman wrote in confidential assignments of the sort he

Witness to Power.

Ehrlichman quickly found year-old Irish a

member

New

of the

a candidate,

a well-decorated,

forty-

York City cop, John J. Caulfield. Caulfield had been and its undercover unit, the Bureau of Special

NYPD

Services and Investigations

(BOS SI). He had made cases against dissiBOSSI as a whole was known for

dent and terrorist organizations, and its

ability to penetrate

One

and keep track of left-wing and black groups.

of the unit's jobs was to work closely with the Secret Service and

guard political dignitaries and world leaders who frequently moved through the city. During the 1960 election, Caulfield had been assigned to the security detail of candidate

Nixon's personal secretary. Rose sheriff of

Cook County,

Illinois.

Richard Nixon.

He had

befriended

Mary Woods, and her brother Joe, In 1968, after leaving the

City Police Department, Caulfield had served as

a security

New

man

the

York

for the

Nixon campaign. But when Ehrlichman approached him

in early

1969 and asked

up a private security firm to provide services for the Nixon White House, Caulfield declined, and instead suggested that he join Ehrlichman's staff and then, as a White House employee, supervise another man w ho would be hired solely as a private eye. Ehrlichman

Caulfield to set

— The President's Private Eye agreed, and

when

Caulfield arrived at the

White House

95

to start

work

in April

1969, he said he had the ideal candidate for presidential

gumshoe,

a

BOSSI

colleague,

Anthony

T.

Ulasewicz.

New York and met LaGuardia Airport. Ulasewicz was ten years older than Caulfield, just as streetwise, and even saltier, with a thick accent picked up from his youth on the Lower East Side and twenty-six years of pounding the pavement on his beats. He was told in the VIP lounge that he would operate under a veil of tight secrecy. He would receive orders only from Caulfield though he could assume that those came from Ehrlichman, who would, in turn, be acting on instructions from the president. Ulasewicz would keep no files and submit no written reports; he later wrote in his memoirs that Ehrlichman said to him, "You'll be allowed no mistakes. There will be no support for you whatsoever from the White House if you're exposed." Ulasewicz refused an offer of six months' work, and insisted on a full year, with the understanding that there would be no written contract, just a verbal guarantee. It was also agreed that to keep everything away from the White House, Ulasewicz would work through an outside attorney. In late June 1969, Caulfield directed Ulasewicz to come to Washington and meet a man named Herbert W. Kalmbach at the Madison Hotel. Kalmbach was Nixon's personal attorney in California, and he told Tony that he would be paid $22,000 a year, plus expenses, and that the checks would come from Kalmbach to T)ny's home in New York. To avoid putting the private eye on the government payroll, Kalmbach was to pay him out of a war chest of unspent Nixon campaign funds. Ulasewicz requested and was promised credit cards in his own name and in that of a nom de guerre, Edward T Stanley. Shortly, he started on his first job for the Nixon White House. One day after Senator Edward M. Kennedy's car plunged off a bridge, killing a young woman, Tony Ulasewicz was at Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, posing as a reporter, asking a lot of questions and taking photographs. He stayed a week, and phoned reports to Caulfield thrice In

May

1969, Ehrlichman and Caulfield flew to

Ulasewicz in the American Airlines

VIP

lounge

at

daily.

Thereafter, he crisscrossed the country, investigating whatever the president or his subordinates thought proper targets for information

such Democrats as George Wallace, Hubert

Humphrey, Edmund

Muskie, Vance Hartke, William Proxmire, and Carl Albert, Republican representatives

John Ashbrook and Paul McCloskey, antiwar groups,

entertainers, think tanks, reporters, even

family. For instance,

Donald Nixon,

Jr.,

when

might

it

fall

members of Nixon's own

was feared that the president's nephew, prey to an embarrassing business deal,

GOLDEN BOY

96

Ulasewicz went to California to look into the matter. When a Florida teachers' union complained of the ease with which Julie Nixon Eisen-

hower landed a job, Ulasewicz was there to investigate the accusation and the resulting news coverage. When the satirical film Millhouse: A White Comedy was released, Tony had to go and see it. When the comic and presidential imitator known as Richard M. Dixon became popular, Tony was charged with looking into his background. He was asked to dig up information on one of Nixon's favorite targets, columnist Jack Anderson, and then to search the backgrounds of Anderson's brothers. Ulasewicz also pried into a group that sold presidential emblems on walnut plaques, tried to discover how the My Lai massacre story had leaked out, and hung around with demonstrators from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the National Peace Action Coalition. Ulasewicz was dispatched to investigate a former lobbyist who had written a book in which he alleged that he had conveyed gifts to many Capitol Hill politicians. Even a band of Quakers members of Nixon's own religion were targeted when they held a prayer vigil in front of the White House. In most of these instances, Ulasewicz was told to find out what he could about these

—

—

groups or individuals, to dig for information that could be used against

them, and report

his findings to Caulfield.

After a year and a half as presidential counsel and then assistant to the president for domestic affairs, John Ehrlichman was appointed head of

new White House Domestic Council, in effect, man in the White House managerial hierarchy,

the

the number-three

just behind Bob Haldeman. It was July 1970, and the White House looked to replace Ehrlichman with a man who in the mold of all the newer Nixon appointees would be competent but not a threat to the president. P^hrlichman, who had known Nixon since the 1960 campaign, had had the president's ear, but the new counsel would not. He would be among the loyal staff, a detail man who would report to Ehrlichman and Haldeman. A prime candidate was one among the dozens of bright-eyed young Republicans of good background who had been attracted to the political arena, John Wesley Dean III. Dean came from a family of some means and had attended a military prep school in Virginia, where he had roomed with Barry M. Goldwater, Jr., son of the Arizona senator. He remained close to the Gold water family for many years. He graduated from Georgetown Law School and married the daughter of a Democratic senator from Missouri. There was one child, and a divorce. He landed a position at a Washington, D.C., law firm specializing in communications law, but

—

—

The President's Private Eye

97

fired when it was discovered that working on a television station license application for a competitor of one of his firm's clients. But Dean landed on his feet and through his connections soon became minority counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, and, after

lasted only six

Dean was

months before he was

secretly

Nixon's election, moved rather easily into the Department of Justice, then under the direction of Attorney General John Mitchell. Obviously bright and ambitious. Dean picked up the sense of ruthlessness that seemed to be in favor in the Nixon administration. After little more than a year as a deputy assistant attorney general, Dean made a list of candidates for a job at the White House being compiled by Bud Krogh, another White House aide of about Dean's age, who had bumped into him on Justice Department matters. Because he was on this list. Dean became the leading candidate for the job of counsel to the president. Ehrlichman and Haldeman, to whom Krogh reported, both assumed that Dean was a Mitchell man because he worked at Justice, but this wasn't precisely the case, for Dean was only at Justice thanks to

Republican connections. Nor did Mitchell recommend him to the fact, both Dean and Mitchell later reported that

White House. In Mitchell had tried

him from taking the job. Dean told Committee on Presidential Campaign Activi-

to discourage

that to the Senate Select

known as the Watergate committee, and recalled in an interview with us that Mitchell had advised him to stay where he was, saying, "I ties,

hate to see .

.

.

you go

to the

You're going to go on

White House, because that's an awful place. up in the Department of Justice you'll have

—

a better job here."

But

for a

young man who wanted power, the White House seemed when Bud Krogh offered to have him flown to San meet with Haldeman, Dean jumped. Haldeman, who

the place to be, and

Clemente to wore his own hair in a close-cropped military cut, didn't like Dean's long blond hair, and joked that Dean would be the resident "hippie." At San Clemente, Dean had a perfunctory interview with Nixon, and was then officially hired. Dean's first day at the White House was July 27, 1970, and from the outset, he determined to make the most of his position. A flashy figure in an environment filled with drab ones, he eventually became known around the White House as the "golden boy," and not only for his long, thin blond hair. Youthful and dashing in appearance. Dean developed a reputation as a playboy, a notion he did not try to discourage.

"He

C. Strachan,

lived a litde fancier than the rest of us," recalls

who was

Gordon

about Dean's age and worked as an assistant to Bob Haldeman. Ehrlichman wrote that Dean "lived beyond his salary.

GOLDEN BOY

98

He owned

an expensive town house in Alexandria [Virginia]. Dean's Porsche, Gucci loafers, and tailored sports clothes should have raised

more eyebrows than they did." In those days Dean wore contact and

were crisp and

his suits

a bit flashy;

only

lenses

when he was

later,

to

appear before the Watergate committee, did he don owlish glasses, conservative suits, and cut his hair so that

it

didn't

below

fall

his collar.

Shortly after assuming his position. Dean began thinking about expanding his domain, and hired former Army officer Fred E Fielding as an assistant lawyer in the counsel's office. They became close friends. In Dean's 1976 memoir. Blind Ambition, he recounted how he

explained to his quicklv firm.

.

rise: .

principal

.

new

"Fred,

We

I

associate the

think

we

way

in

which

their careers could

have to look at our office as a small law

have to build our practice like any other law firm.

client,

of course,

is

the president.

But

Our

to convince the

president we're not just the only law office in town, but the best, we've got to convince a lot of other people

first."

Especially

Haldeman and

Ehrlichman.

But how to convince them? As Dean tried to assess the situation at the White House, events soon showed him that intelligence gathering was the key to power in the Nixon White House. One of Dean's first assignments from Haldeman was to look over a startling proposal to revamp the government's domestic intelligence operations in order to neutralize radical groups such as the Black Panthers and the Weathermen. The scheme had been the work of another of the White House's bright young stalwarts, Nixon aide Tom Charles Huston. The impetus was a meeting chaired by Nixon in the Oval Office on June 5, 1970, attended by J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Helms, and the chiefs of the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The various agencies were almost at war with one another; just a few months earlier, for instance, Hoover had cut all FBI communication with the CIA. Nixon wanted the agencies to work together against the threat from the "New Left." In the aftermath of Nixon's decision in

May

1970 to invade

Cambodia, and the killings of several students at Kent State University, colleges

all

over the country were again being rocked by riots and

demonstrations as they had been

year of Lyndon Johnson's young people were objecting to

in the last

presidency, and for the same reason

—

the president's war policies. In Nixon's view, the threat was grave and

must be attacked; therefore the agencies must find some way to bury and concentrate on the true enemy. Huston was assigned to help Hoover and the intelligence chiefs clear obstacles to their working jointly on these matters.

their differences

The President's Private Eye In early July,

Huston sent

a

99

long analysis to the president, endorsed

by Hoover and the other intelligence agency directors, on how to enhance cooperation. To this memo Huston added his own secret one that became known as the "Huston Plan." It called for six activities,

some of which were

They included "who pose a major

clearly illegal.

lance of persons and groups security"; monitoring of

American

citizens

by

electronic surveil-

threat to internal

international

communi-

on the covert opening of mail by federal agents; surreptitious entries and burglaries to gain information on the groups; the recruitment of more campus informants; and, to ensure that the objectives were carried out and that intelligence continued to be gathered, the formation of a new interagency group consisting of the agencies at the June 5 meeting and military counterintelligence agencies. Nixon endorsed these measures in the Huston Plan on July 14, 1970, because, as he put it in his memoir, "I felt they were necessary and justified by the violence we faced." The secret plan angered J. Edgar Hoover, not because he objected to coming down hard on dissidents, but, rather, because he felt that any new interagency group would encroach on the turf of the FBI and because he was concerned about the negative public reaction should any of the activities be exposed. On July 27, the day Dean began work at the White House, Hoover took the unusual step of venturing out of his own domain to visit his nominal superior, Attorney General John Mitchell. As Hoover learned, Mitchell did not know anything about the Huston Plan at the time. "I was kept in the dark until I found out about it from Hoover," Mitchell later told us. But as soon as he was apprised of the plan, Mitchell agreed with Hoover that it must be cations facilities; the relaxation of restrictions

stopped

—not

for Hoover's reasons, but because

unconstitutional elements

him

it

—and

it

contained clearly

immediately visited Nixon and told

could not go forward. In testament to Mitchell's arguments and

good sense, Nixon canceled the plan shortly thereafter and Huston was relieved of his responsibilities in the area of

Coordination of

official

domestic intelligence.

domestic intelligence from various federal

agencies concerning antiwar activists and other "radicals" was then

handed

to the

new White House

counsel, John Dean, along with a

copy of the rejected Huston Plan. But

it

seemed that the president was

not satisfied with the quality of domestic intelligence, because in August and September Haldeman pushed Dean to try and find a way around the Hoover roadblock. In pursuit of a solution, on September

still

17, 1970,

Dean went

John Mitchell. Hours earlier, Helms and other senior CIA

to see his old boss,

Mitchell had lunched with Director

GOLDEN BOY

100

officials

who had

all

agreed that the FBI wasn't doing a very good job

of collecting domestic intelligence.

Dean and Mitchell

spoke, and the next day

to Mitchell with several suggestions: set up,

Dean prepared a memo a new committee

There should be

an interagency group to evaluate the government's domestic and it should have "operational" responsibilities

intelligence product, as well.

Both men. Dean's

memo

said,

had agreed that

"it

would be

inappropriate to have any blanket removal of restrictions" such as had

been proposed in the Huston Plan; instead, Dean suggested that "The most appropriate procedure would be to decide on the type of intelligence we need, based on an assessment of the recommendations of this unit, and then to proceed to remove the restraints as necessary to obtain such intelligence." Dean's plan languished and was never put into operation. Years later, in the spring of 1973, when Dean was talking to federal prosecutors and preparing to appear before the Senate committee investigating Watergate, he gave a copy of the Huston Plan to Federal Judge John J. Sirica, who turned it over to the Senate committee. Dean's action helped to establish his bona fides as the accuser of the president and was the cause of much alarm. In his testimony and writings thereafter. Dean suggested that he had always been nervous about the Huston Plan and that he had tried to get around it, and as a last resort had gotten John Mitchell to kill the revised version. In an interview. Dean told us, "I looked at that goddamn Tom Huston report," went to Mitchell and said, "General, I find it pretty spooky." But as the September 18, 1970, memo to Mitchell shows. Dean actually embraced rather than rejected the removal of "restraints as necessary to obtain" intelligence.

A

small matter?

same incident? As

A

will

minor divergence between two versions of the

become

clear as this inquiry continues. Dean's

attempt to gloss over the actual disposition of the Huston Plan was first

a

sign of the construction of a grand edifice of deceit.

When John Dean

took over the office of counsel to the president, says

John Khrlichman, it was an office that "was really vacant ... it was essentially unsupervised." Ehrlichman had left to set up the new Domestic Council, taking with him his own small staff, and thus "Dean was pretty much on his own." But Jack Caulfield had stayed behind and Dean soon was supervising his intelligence work. Dean looked in all the nooks and crannies and cabinets and found whatever assets the office possessed. Hanging in a forgotten closet was his predecessor

Ibny Ulasewicz.

The President's Private Eye Later, in 1973, appearing before the Senate,

101

Dean

testified to little

knowledge about Ulasewicz, saying he didn't know or remember his full name until that year. In Blind Ambition, he wrote that in July 1971 one year after he had become counsel he only knew that one of Caulfield's "operatives" was named Tony, "but I didn't find out his last name, Ulasewicz, until years later." Dean's Senate testimony about Ulasewicz befuddled Haldeman aide Gordon Strachan. "That kind of surprised me," Strachan told us. "I thought [Ulasewicz] was [Dean's] guy." Strachan was right: Ulasewicz was Dean's guy. In fact. Dean knew all about Ulasewicz, as can be seen from Dean's comments to the former detective when Caulfield introduced them at the White House. Ulasewicz later described this meeting to a Senate

—

—

investigator,

who

recorded in his notes that

bers his conversation with that

Dean

as

"He

[Ulasewicz]

remem-

being short and pleasant, indicating

Dean was aware of what Ulasewicz had been doing, and was

appreciative of his work."

The

investigator's notes,

National Archives, also record that Ulasewicz quoted

him: "You've been doing good work. reads,

"Dean knew of his

May

located in the

Dean

as telling

get better." Yet another note

[Ulasewicz's] travels, assignments."

Dean's claims of noninvolvement with Ulasewicz are further controby portions of Dean's own book, in which he wrote of some of

verted

—

White House counsel assignments match many of the investigations carried out by Ulasewicz, such as those aimed against the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, impersonator Richard M. Dixon, and so on. Dean even boasts of having had

the assignments he undertook as that

to investigate Representative

once worked as

by Nixon

for a seat

memorandum

Richard Poff of Virginia, for

a legislative aide,

when

whom

he'd

Poff was under consideration

on the Supreme Court.

A

Senate committee staff

of seventy-three Ulasewicz assignments, compiled by

the investigators from long conversations with Tony, 37 assignment as

lists

his

Number

"Background investigation into Congressman Richard

hometown in Virginia." As we will see, despite Dean's Dean knew precisely who Ulasewicz was, often ordered him action through Caulfield, and later issued orders directly to him

Poff in his denials,

into

without an intermediary.

Dean, Caulfield, and Ulasewicz were also involved in a Nixon attempt to settle an old score. Back in 1956, Nixon's brother Donald had received a secret loan from Howard Hughes; when this loan was revealed during the 1960 campaign,

it

caused some embarrassment.

make the Democrats pay for His friend Bebe Rebozo had convinced Nixon that Democratic Party chairman Lawrence E O'Brien had been Eleven years

later,

Nixon determined

having revealed that loan.

to

— GOLDEN BOY

102

secretly retained "It

by Hughes

to represent his interests in Washington.

would seem that the time

is

approaching

when Larry O'Brien

is

held accountable for his retainer with Hughes," Nixon wrote in a

memo

to

Haldeman

in

January 1971; the president suggested that

Charles W. Colson, Nixon's special counsel, could obtain the proof of it, and thereby damage the DemoDean," Haldeman scribbled on the bottom of the memo, and the next day gave the assignment to the White House

the O'Brien-Hughes deal, expose crats.

"Let's try

counsel. It

has long been believed that this early investigation of Larry

O'Brien was the germ of the seed that became the Watergate affair, and that it led to the break-in of Democratic Party headquarters in June of 1972. As we will see in later chapters, and demonstrate conclusively for the first time, the target of the two Watergate burglaries was specifically not O'Brien.

cisely

This 1971 investigation of O'Brien led pre-

nowhere.

lb be

sure, Ulasewicz,

years earlier, did

more

who had been

put on O'Brien's

fieldwork, and so did Dean.

ing lead, provided by Colson, was Robert

F.

trail

two

The most promis-

Bennett, son of Utah

man who had just taken over Washington public relations firm that had strong connections to the CIA and that had just signed Howard Hughes as a client. Bennett claimed to Dean that he knew all about the O'BrienHughes relationship, and promised to obtain documentation for it, but never did so. Much later, Nixon obtained IRS records that showed that O'Brien had indeed received a retainer from Howard Hughes for $160, ()()(). Bv that time, however. Dean, Caulfield, and Ulasewicz had Senator VVallace

Mullen

Bennett and the

F.

& Company,

a

gone on to other investigations. Within six months of arriving. Dean had made the counsel's office into a small but growing power center. He had sufficiently impressed Haldeman enough to merit more perks, such as being allowed to have an Army Signal Corps telephone in his home. He knew he had a loyal staff of three lawyers, plus Caulfield, and, as he wrote in Blind Ambition,

"it

did not take

[my

superiors] long to notice that the

counsel's office could perform intelligence

work

for the

White House.

[We] built up a reputation for such intelligence investigations some juicy, many simply laborious and we handled them while the .

.

.

—

ordinarv legal work

hummed

along."

Dean was summoned to Haldeman's office and given specific instructions on his role in the Nixon reelection campaign. "He knew \\ hat he wanted from me," Dean wrote, describing Haldeman's In April 1971,

worrv that the Republican convention would be ruined by antiwar

The President's Private Eye

103

Democratic gathering had been in 1968. that can be improved, for example, is demonstration protests as the

Haldeman

"

'One thing

intelligence,'

told him. 'We're not going to have a convention like the

the Democrats had in Chicago.'

one

"

chance to prove himself during the massive antiwar demonstration of May 3, 1971, that followed Nixon's decision to order military "incursions" into Laos. Dean's office became the focal point for intelligence gathered about the demonstrators, who had vowed to

Dean soon had

a

down Washington

day by blocking roads and bridges. Special centers of the FBI, the District of telephone lines in the Columbia police headquarters, and the Department of Justice all were shut

for a

command

White House office. During that day of protest. Dean from the field and sent reports directly to word that Nixon was pleased with received Dean the president; later, linked to Dean's

and

his staff received data

performance.

his

Haldeman

patted

Dean on

him to Dean was becoming

the head, too, and tried to spur

even greater efforts against the demonstrators, but

such actions would not gain for his "law firm" the senior status he desired. But perhaps he could transfer the success in the antiwar demonstrations to a larger role for antsy with chasing protestors and

felt

himself in the 1972 presidential election campaign, something already

under intense consideration in the summer of 1971. "I reflected on how I might take advantage of Haldeman's preoccupation" with political intelligence, Dean wrote in his memoirs.

I

knew

the campaign

would be

guished themselves. ... at the

a

steppingstone for those

If the counsel's office

tie-lines,

things.

We had

intelligence.

a

—

special

White

knew we would be in the thick of House offices in demonstration White other jump on

half-hourly reports

Why

—

distin-

could play the same role

Republican convention we had played on iMayday

House

who

I

not expand our role to

all

intelligence that

would be

of interest to the President in a campaign?

In July 1971,

Dean took

the idea to Haldeman, seeking "a grant of

authority" to prepare a regular confidential digest for the president on

domestic intelligence, from crime and drugs through "civil rights problems of note" and "political intelligence." Dean's mixed bag of types of intelligence was a cover for what Dean really sought, that is, to be the focal point for political intelligence (that would, for example,

all

opposing campaigns, personal dirt on Nixon's opponents, and Democratic and dissident Republican campaign secrets). Haldeman said such information was already being reveal the identity of contributors to

GOLDEN BOY

104

I

compiled by Gordon Strachan, who worked more closely with the chief of staff, and Haldeman shot down the Dean Plan. There is a saying in Washington that in the capital, nothing is ever completely dead. John Mitchell thought he had shot down the Huston Plan, but aspects of it came creeping back into administration policy.

Haldeman thought he had

shot

down Dean's

plan, having told the

Haldeman did not understand the degree to which Dean saw his dream of becoming

counsel to stick to demonstration intelligence. But

campaign would do

intelligence czar as his to

keep that dream

own

alive.

ticket to the top,

and what Dean

And Haldeman had

—

inadvertently

shown Dean the way to get what he wanted to go through Gordon Strachan. As time went on, Dean would facilitate a misunderstanding between Haldeman and Strachan, causing Strachan to believe that Dean had been placed in charge of political intelligence, not just demonstration intelligence.

Undaunted by Haldeman, Dean soon devised a project to help get On August 16, 1971, he produced a memorandum titled "Dealing with our Political Enemies," that in his own words addressed "how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies." Dean suggested that key White House staff members collect names of administration opponents whom "we should be giving a hard time" and then use various government departments and agencies to "screw them." This Dean memo was the germ that led to a White House "enemies list." Testifying in 1973, Dean admitted he had written the document, which was not signed and listed no addressee, but insisted he had been pushed into doing it by others in the White House. As far as he could remember, he told the Senate Watergate committee, he had sent the memo to Haldeman and Ehrlichman for approval, disapproval, or comment. But the only copy that ever surfaced was one in which the his foot in the door.

approve, disapprove,

and comment

lines

were blank. In

testimony, Ehrlichman denied ever seeing the

Dean's testimony included the claim that influence at the as for the

White House

enemies

list "I

also

his

own

memo. "I

was

a

restraining

many wild and crazy schemes," and made it very clear ... just didn't want to

I

to get involved in doing the sort of things they wanted."

A

skeptical

Senator Daniel K. Inouye, the Hawaii Democrat, questioned Dean about that, but Dean's claim stood, even though the committee had

White House memos addressed to Dean that indicated he was very much involved. Two of those were memos by Gordon Strachan, who by the fall of 1971 was working

more

closely with Dean. In one, Strachan wrote to

The President's Private Eye

105

"you have the action on the poHtical enemies project" while in another Strachan forwarded a Hst of "fat cats" supporting Muskie and scribbled at the top of the page, "The attached should be of interest to you and the political enemies project." This interest in Muskie led to three Tony Ulasewicz assignments that focused on financial backers of the Maine Democrat. As the reader will recall, in Blind Ambition Dean openly admitted

Dean

that

to participating in intelligence assignments, including "juicy" ones,

and to

expand his intelligence portfolio to encompass "all would be of interest to the President in a campaign."

a desire to

intelligence that

Strikingly, before the Senate Watergate committee.

Dean did

his best

to portray his political intelligence role as at best peripheral.

Despite Dean's partial retreat in his book from his earlier

mony,

for the past eighteen years

Dean

his true relationship to Caulfield and,

He trumpeted

testi-

has consistently sought to bury

more

to the point, Ulasewicz.

this position first to the

Senate investigating committee,

when he

took over the counsel's office the

suggesting, for instance, that

use of Caulfield and Ulasewicz diminished, that "Caulfield seldom

informed

House

me of his findings," and that "the persons on the White who were most interested in political intelligence were

staff

Ehrlichman, Haldeman, and Colson." In his memoir, published after he had served a short prison term. Dean maintained the same line. He continued to adhere to it in a recent interview. Regarding Caulfield's

Dean

investigative work.

of that" and "I scratched

came out

in dribs

for his interest in

declared, "It just

how

insisted to us, "I

my

head for

was never

a long

in the loop

time before

it

on any

just sort

of

what he [Caulfield] was doing." As gathering intelligence as White House counsel. Dean wasn't my bag. It was something I just didn't know and drabs

as to

to do."

But we have pored over the mountains of testimony and documents, and have interviewed Caulfield, Ulasewicz, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, and many others, and can now present a more accurate picture of what Dean did to get around Haldeman's blocking him from the arena of overseeing the collection of politically important intelligence. "I

was working

for

Dean,

just as

I

had for Ehrlichman," Caulfield

"He knew somebody was doing it. He's full of shit when he says he knew very little about Ulasewicz." In fact, said Caulfield, Dean "at my behest renegotiated the continuation of Ulase-

told us recently.

wicz's contract."

One

of the more interesting of the Caulfield-Ulasewicz assignments

from Dean came

in

October 1971. Acting on

a request

and

a tip

from

GOLDEN BOY

106

Colson,

Dean had asked

ring in

New

Caulfield to investigate the

York, with an eve toward finding out

"Happy Hooker" if

any cHents of

Xaviera Hollander had been high-ranking politicians. Caulfield sent

Dean

Tony had obtained because the names of too many prominent members of

Ulasewicz, but later told

was useless

that the material

both parties were present in Hollander's appointment books: dirt on

by

the Democrats would be canceled out

Dean

dirt

on the Republicans.

didn't use the material as he had planned, in order to raise his

Haldeman, and Ehrlichman, but he did hint at a Ronald L. Ziegler. Pulling someone else's chain was part of the macho game at the Nixon White House. As 1971 waned Caulfield saw that Dean's appetite for political stock with Colson, bit

of

it

to scare press secretary

intelligence continued to increase.

chances as [Dean] saw

"I

saw

a desire to take greater

the potential rewards.

And

the key to the ball

—who was going

to get it and who was going to and played the game heartily. ... I was getting my instructions from Dean. I did whatever Dean asked ... I would put Tony to work." On only one job suggested by Dean did Caulfield have qualms, he told us, and that was an assignment to determine "the feasibility of

game was provide

intelligence

it.

Dean saw

that

getting information out of the Watergate,"

by which Caulfield meant It was No-

the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

vember of 1971,

DNC office.

that

seven months before the actual break-ins at the

is,

"The more

I thought about the thing, the more I saw the was a goddamn good chance if that thing failed you could bring down the president," Caulfield remembered with

hazards. In

my

view,

it

perfect 20-20 hindsight.

Tony Ulasewicz recalled in his book that Caulfield told him that "Dean wants you to check out the offices of the Democratic National Committee." (Caulfield places Ulasewicz's entry in November of 1971. Ulasewicz told us that that

it

was the end of

and not Ulasewicz

is

it

was

May

in April

of 1972.

correct because,

House

March of

of 1972, but wrote in his book

We

are convinced that Caulfield

among

other reasons, Caulfield

There was no break-in; Ulasewicz simply walked in as a visitor and noted the location of various offices within the floor that was occupied by the DNC. He reported back, Ulasewicz told us, telling Caulfield "there was nothing that would be of particular interest. It was a business office, it was a kind of a place you would send donations, it was a similar business office to what the Republicans would have, a place for records of donors, sending out brochures, making arrangements for dinners and left

the White

in

1972.)

The President's Private Eye

107

fund-raising programs, hiring people out in the

field, contacts with newspapers and all the routine matters." Ulasewicz says he reported, " 'I don't know what you think is in this office.' My street smarts told me when Dean's asking me this kind of thing, there's something that they are after. Something hot. I told " him, 'It's not there.' We asked Dean about these Caulfield and Ulasewicz accounts that he assigned Tony to check out the DNC offices at the Watergate, 'i can absolutely flat out tell you that isn't true," he first responded. When the subject came up a second time Dean said, "I don't have any knowledge" of sending Ulasewicz in but that perhaps Caulfield "came into my office and said, 'John, I think Tony should go in' [to the DNC]." At that moment. Dean suggested, he may have been "in the middle of something else. [I] don't even reflect on it, and say, 'Whatever " you think, Jack.' You know, which I did a lot. 'Just go and do it.' The story of Tony Ulasewicz's visit to the Democratic National Committee represents the first time anyone in the Nixon administration had mentioned the Watergate complex as a target of investigation. We will come back to this unusual Ulasewicz walk-through in later chapters, and ascertain its full significance then.

By

the spring of 1971, Caulfield had begun to think about leaving the

White House in order to Ehrlichman had suggested

set

up the him in

private security business that

He'd create an outside Nixon campaign, and much more. He wrote up his suggestions in a memo for John Dean, suggesting $500,000 to fund what he called Operation Sandwedge. Sandwedge would provide "offensive intelligence and defensive security" to counteract what Caulfield warned could be "a strong, covert intelligence effort mounted against us in 1972 by the Democratic nominee." He had looked into a security firm organized by former Robert Kennedy-era Justice Department employees known as Intertel. Howard Hughes was an Intertel client, and the Sandwedge memo analyzed Intertel and concluded that it was a group controlled by Larry O'Brien and the Kennedys. Sand wedge's offensive side included clandestine operations: "penetration of nominees [sic] entourage and headquarters; 'Black Bag' capability ... to minimize Democratic voting violations in Illinois, Texas, etc.; surveillance of Democratic primaries, convention, meetings, etc.; and derogatory information investigative to

1969.

entity that could provide security to the 1972

capability world-wide." Caulfield suggested that the principals in the

Sandwedge organization include Rose Mary Wbods's brother Joe the sheriff, and IRS official Vernon Acree.

former

GOLDEN BOY

108

Sandwedge was "my initiative, but it really Dean about what I would do after my departure from the White House." Dean tried to sell Sandwedge to Mitchell and Haldeman, but both rejected it. Having struck out with the senior people, Dean dropped down a level, pushing the Sandwedge proposal to Gordon Strachan, Haldeman's eyes and ears on political matters, and to Jeb Magruder, a former Haldeman aide who now worked for the Nixon reelection committee as deputy campaign director. But, though Strachan queried Haldeman repeatedly Caulfield told us that

involved a lot of discussions with John

about increasing Dean's involvement

in intelligence-gathering.

Dean

once again found no takers for the Sandwedge operation that Caulfield

had proposed.

As an

Dean arranged

alternative.

with John Mitchell,

who was

become the head of Nixon's held on November 24, 1971.

for Caulfield to have

an interview

slated to leave Justice in early 1972 to

reelection campaign.

In later testimony before the Senate,

That interview was

Dean would claim

that he

was

not present during the entire meeting, but that Caulfield had reported

him that Mitchell had wanted Caulfield to do some investigative work on the New Hampshire campaign of Paul N. "Pete" McCloskey, the California congressman who was challenging Nixon for the Repubto

lican

nomination.

Caulfield says that

on November 24 he only discussed with Mitchell

the possibility of his working on the forthcoming campaign as a

Did Mitchell ever ask him to penetrate the McCloskey campaign? "No," Caulfield told us. "I'm certain that he didn't." Caulfield assumes that it was Dean who ordered the McCloskey probe "because that was the guy I was working for at the time." Mitchell also confirmed that future security work was the substance of their conversation, and that there was no discussion of snooping around McCloskey or of any other investigative task. It's an important distinction, because Dean later used this meeting security official.

between Caulfield and Mitchell

effectively to shift responsibility for

initiating intelligence-gathering activities to Mitchell

himself.

To support

gate committee a

his position,

memo

Dean submitted

of an "investigative report that Mr. Caulfield

prepared for Mitchell on the McCloskey I

he committee didn't look

document

clearly

showed

and to exculpate

to the Senate Water-

it

at the

New Hampshire campaign." memo very carefully, for the

could not have resulted from the

24 meeting, as Dean claimed.

It

November

actually described an investigation

The President's Private Eye

109

conducted (by Tony Ulasewicz) from November 18 to November 21, three days prior to the date that Mitchell saw Caulfield in his office. Dean submitted to the committee a second memo addressed to the attorney general from Dean dated December 1, 1971, attaching "some additional information

which Jack

Mc-

[Caulfield] has collected re

Closkey's operation,"

There is also a problem with this second memo. The memo bears no trace of having come from the White House no letterhead, and no initials, such as characterize other documents that originated in the White House during that period of time. Did Dean prepare this memo after leaving the White House, for the purpose of shoring up his contention that it was Mitchell who ordered the McCloskey investiga-

—

tion.^

He may

well have

another of his

—again—

that

done

so.

Dean submitted

to the

committee

memos

addressed to Mitchell, dated January 12, 1972, was not written on White House letterhead and bears no

This was

memo

on

purported Dean-Mitchell conversation that said, "As a result of our recent conversation, I asked Jack Caulfield to prepare a summary of his activities so that you could review them. However, because of the sensitivity of this information, I would like to suggest that you briefly meet with Jack and go over this material. Operation Sandwedge will be in need of refunding at the end of this month so the time is quite appropriate for such a review." This does not square with two facts. initials.

First,

Dean

a

testified that

a

Sandwedge had been

of 1971, in part because Mitchell rejected skeptical

want

it.

killed

by November

When asked by the why Mitchell would

Democratic Senator Inouye to explain Sandwedge in January of 1972 if the plan had died "a

to refund

natural death"

months

transferring his

own

earlier.

Dean

again implicated Mitchell

actions to the attorney general.

Dean

first

by

con-

cocted the story that Caulfield "continued to do various investigative

assignments" for Mitchell after the November 24 meeting. And he then said that Mitchell assumed that Operation Sandwedge was a handy label for all the

Caulfield-Ulasewicz activities, and so Dean's mention

January 12 memo to Mitchell was merely a shorthand However, at that time the label "Sandwedge" was a code name used by Dean and Caulfield for Tony Ulasewicz investigations; the label was not something Mitchell would have known. Second, Sandwedge-Ulasewicz had in fact been refunded months

of

it

in the

device.

earlier in the fall

of 1971 in the

Dean himself was involved

amount of $50,000.

Caulfield says that

extended through 1972, renegotiating the continuation with Herb Kalmbach. It in getting Ulasewicz's contract

GOLDEN BOY

110

was not the half-million that Caulfield had originally envisioned for Sand wedge, but it was enough to keep Ulasewicz on board. In his book, Ulasewicz described meeting with Kalmbach and Caulfield in September of 1971 for the purpose of arranging his payments through the upcoming election. And Gordon Strachan, reflecting a conversation he'd had with Dean, wrote a memo on October 27 saying that "Sandwedge has received an initial 50," meaning $50,000. Furthermore, the "summary of [Caulfield-Ulasewicz]

Dean claimed

activities"

"you commit-

to have "asked Jack Caulfield to prepare" so that

them" was unavailable

[Mitchell] could review

to the Senate

that summary to them, but couldn't produce thought earlier I did have a list," he testified. "I have searched my records that were available and I have no such list available." No such tee. it.

list

Dean had promised

"I

was ever given

to the

committee. But Dean's testimony on the

matter stood, and so he had implicated John Mitchell as Caulfield's action officer for campaign espionage and covered up his own role as director of the Caulfield-Ulasewicz operation.

Mitchell denied he had anything to do with Ulasewicz's activities.

he answered to Watergate committee chief counsel Sam Dash if he was aware that Tony Ulasewicz was working at the White House for Dean, or for anybody else. "I didn't know who

"No,

when

sir,"

asked

Ulasewicz was until the spring of 1973," Mitchell told us. Caulfield insists that

it

was Dean

reports on them.

The

who

initiated all

such operations and received

though hired by Ehrlichman and paid by Kalmbach, had become for all intents and purposes the exclusive gumshoe of White House counsel John Dean, president's private eye,

SANDWEDGE GEMSTONE

White House and the rejection of his Operation Sand wedge plan were a large blow to John Dean, who envisioned the collection and purveying of intelligence as the route to power. Bob Haldeman had rejected his request to handle all intelligence for the forthcoming batde for Nixon's reelection, but Dean had the resources to continue gathering information on his own, the private investigators Caulfield and Ulasewicz. Now Caulfield was going to leave, and Dean had to have a replacement. Opportunity presented itself in the form of G. Gordon Liddy. Liddy was a weapon waiting to be aimed and fired. Then fortyone, he had been an FBI agent, a firearms expert, a pilot, an upstate New York prosecutor, and the unsuccessful conservative candidate for a Republican congressional nomination. He had a reputation for blunt

JACK

Caulfield's desire to leave the

honesty and unconventional derring-do. After his defeat in the New York primary, by calling in political favors Liddy landed a job in

Treasury Department, working on firearms and narcotics matters. In his position he came into contact with many midlevel Justice Department officials including Dean, who was then an

Washington

at the

111

112

GOLDEN BOY

deputy attorney general. Donald Santarelli, also an associate deputy at Justice who worked with Liddy on firearms matters, warned Liddy about Dean. In his autobiography, Will, Liddy wrote that Santarelli labeled Dean an "idea thief" and told Liddy that if "one mentioned a good idea in Dean's presence, one remotely in Dean's official area of interest, before one's memorandum was out of the typewriter. Dean's would be on the appropriate desk, crediting himself with the idea." As is clear from that passage, Liddy didn't like Dean much, even then. When Dean was on the Hill, one source who worked with him told us, he would "come in early in the morning before anybody else and go around and look on their desks to see what they were working on," in order to steal their ideas, and then "hog" the credit in the service of "promoting himself." Another Dean strategy, frequently in evidence before he reached the White House, was a propensity for unauthorized use of his superior's name. "Either [Dean] would just lie about it," said this former Dean colleague, who prefers anonymity, "or he would mention something obliquely to the person whose name he was going to use and would do it in such a way that the guy wouldn't notice that Dean was going to extrapolate authority from it. It's an old trick in Washington." This was done, said the source, in an indirect way "that would not get your attention or not warn you that you were making a commitment to something you didn't want to commit to." Because of this behavior "we all formed a rather arm's length attitude toward John Dean because you couldn't believe him," says Robert T. Hartmann, one of Dean's fellow staffers on Capitol Hill, who later became a top aide to Gerald associate

R. Ford.

At Justice, Liddy didn't think much about Dean, and when the former FBI man transferred into the White House in June 1971, to work for Bud Krogh, Dean was only a figure to pass in the hall or to be seen across the White House mess. Krogh, who had dealt with Liddy on firearms matters, got Liddy assigned to the newly formed Special Investigations Unit, the one that was later dubbed the Plumbers. Liddy started at a critical time. On June 13, 1971, The New York Times and other newspapers began publishing excerpts from the secret Defense Department study that became known as the Pentagon Papers. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger was enraged by this publication, even though it had little to do with his current employer, Richard Nixon, for Kissinger had been a consultant to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and the Pentagon Papers dealt at length with those administrations' involvement in Vietnam. Evidently fearing that his own role in shaping Vietnam policy would be revealed,

Sandwedge Becomes GEMSTONE Kissinger convinced national security.

113

Nixon

When

it

that the pubHcation was a grave threat to was discovered that the Pentagon Papers had

been given to the press by Kissinger's past colleague, Daniel Ellsberg, campaign to discredit Ellsberg was launched from the Oval Office. Don Stewart and Fred Buzhardt at the Pentagon and others at the Justice Department and at the FBI were all investigating the leak, but Krogh and David Young, the former Kissinger aide who would help break open the Moorer-Radford affair, were asked to look into the leak as well. When Liddy came on board, the onetime FBI investigator was assigned to help in the task. The Plumbers were well equipped. Room 16 of the old EOB was a a furious

KYX

suite of three offices that contained a

mostly to speak securely to the

CIA

at

scramble phone, used

Langley. "It sounded as

if

we

were speaking to each other from opposite ends of a long drainpipe," Liddy recalled in his autobiography. The pressure on the Plumbers to do something intensified in July, when The New York Times reported the administration's confidential fallback negotiation position in the on-

SALT talks with the Soviets. This revelation infuriated Nixon more than the Pentagon Papers, as it undermined a current negotiation strategy. Word came down to the Plumbers that the stories and leaks must be stopped at all costs. The Plumbers now got some additional help. His name was E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent, recently retired and working for a fellow alumnus of Brown University, presidential aide Chuck Colson. On July 6, Hunt wandered over to Room 16 looking for information on

going

Ellsberg.

Ex-FBI man Liddy and ex-CIA man Hunt recognized one another comrades in arms. But whereas Liddy was firmly out of the FBI, Jim Hougan persuasively argues in his 1984 book Secret Agenda that Hunt's ties with the CIA had not ended when he officially retired from the agency in April of 1970. While working for Colson, Hunt also worked for the Mullen public relations firm, owned by Robert Bennett, which was being used as a front by the CIA, and had many other as

continuing connections to the agency.

Plumbers Hunt and Liddy served together on one of the most then under way, "Project Jennifer," in which the Glomar Explorer ship was to retrieve a Soviet submarine from the Pacific floor bed, under the guise of a Howard Hughes-financed mining operation. They also worked to locate evidence that might link President John Kennedy to the assassination of former South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 anything deleterious to any Kennedy was highly prized within the Nixon White House. While sensitive investigations

—

GOLDEN BOY

114

pursuing these matters, they also kept Ellsberg in their sights. "We became fast friends and our famiHes visited each other," Liddy recalled.

"Even on social occasions, when Howard and I would be alone together, we'd talk about the Ellsberg case." They were unable to resolve the basic question of whether Ellsberg had acted as a "romantic rebel of the

left

and lone wolf," or

as "part of a

spy ring that had deliberately

betrayed top secret information in unprecedented quantity to the Soviet Union."

Unsure as to Ellsberg's motives, the Plumbers, at the suggestion of Hunt, asked the CIA to draw up a psychological profile of Ellsberg. Two were done, and both were deemed unsatisfactory not only by Hunt and Liddy but also by Young and Krogh. Hunt and Liddy then decided what was needed was a black bag job on the offices of Ellsberg's psychiatrist Dr. Lewis J. Fielding; it was hoped that Fielding's files might contain information on Ellsberg's motivations and contacts. Liddy put a proposition to Bud Krogh. iViuch later, a memo from Bud Krogh and David Young to Ehrlich-

man

surfaced, a

memo

that covered several matters relating to the leak

of the Pentagon Papers. Young and Krogh operation be undertaken to examine

all

recommended

the medical

"that a covert

held by which he

files still

Ellsberg's psychoanalyst covering the two-year period in

was undergoing analysis." A space was provided for Ehrlichman to approve or disapprove, and he put his "E" in the approve box, and added the handwritten comment, "If done under your assurance that it is not traceable." Ehrlichman admits checking that box, but says that what he approved was merely an investigation of Ellsberg by Liddy and Hunt, not a burglary. It was his understanding that Liddy and Hunt would go and talk to Dr. Fielding, and he remembers the "not traceable" warning as really being an admonition that the clandestine-minded duo of Hunt and Liddy shouldn't try to pass themselves off as "White House cops." Eventually, Ehrlichman went to jail for his [Ellsberg]

role in this break-in.

Outfitted with CIA-furnished disguises, aliases, and small cameras,

Hunt and Liddy flew to Los Angeles, convinced a cleaning woman to let them into Fielding's office, and snapped photos that were turned over to the CIA for processing. Hunt then recruited a handful of Miami-based Cubans known to Hunt from the time of his involvement in the Bay of Pigs. Trained in clandestine work, these Cubans were Hunt. 1 Labor Day weekend the Cubans broke into Fielding's office as Hunt and Liddy remained outside as guards, Liddy with a knife and ready to kill, if necessary, to protect the operation. On fiercely loyal to

Over the 197

— Sandwedge Becomes GEMSTONE

115

emerging, the Cubans told Liddy they had found nothing, though they

had severely damaged some

file

had appear

cabinets; to cover their traces they

dumping pills and papers about to make it had been that of a drug addict searching for narcotics. Liddy thought the Fielding office episode a failure, and was puzzled because back at the hotel room. Hunt and the Cubans celebrated with champagne. Today, Liddy wonders whether Hunt and the Cubans may well have concealed the fruits of the Fielding break-in from him, found just what they had sought, photographed it, and whisked the results back to their true employer, the CIA. Otherwise, what was there to ransacked the

office,

as if the entry

celebrate?

The ex-FBI man consoled himself with a new project handed him by Krogh, an analysis of the current state of the FBI and the future of Director J. Edgar Hoover. Nixon was trying to decide if he should retain Hoover, then well past retirement age. Liddy's critique of the

Bureau's internal politics was incisive, and his recommendation that his

former boss (and an idol of his boyhood) be replaced stirred

admiring comment from Nixon, though for felt

many

reasons the president

himself unable to get rid of Hoover.

the

Dean was being pressured by Jeb Magruder, Nixon deputy campaign director, to give up the junior partner in

his

"law firm," Fred Fielding

Just at this time, John

so Fielding could

—no

relation to Ellsberg's psychiatrist

become general counsel

to the president's reelection

committee. Dean countered with the suggestion that the committee try to take

David Young, but Krogh refused to give

instead suggested to

Dean

up and was G. Gordon

his partner

that the proper candidate

Liddy.

Liddy as counsel to the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP) was the answer to several of Dean's problems. If he recommended Liddy, he would have a man somewhat beholden to him who could be asked to do intelligence gathering on someone else's nickel while leaving intact Dean's "law firm" in the White House. Since the demise of Caulfield's proposed Operation Sandwedge, Dean had been searching for a way to undertake the gathering of political intelligence. Magruder reported in his book that when he approached Dean about

—

finding a lawyer for the

CRP, Dean

said,

"Maybe we could combine

the intelligence job with the general counsel

Though

.

.

.

I'll

check into

it."

Haldeman had rejected Sandwedge, both men envision some sort of operation capable of gathering

Mitchell and

continued to

information on the Democrats and also able to neutralize expected antiwar demonstrations at the Republican convention. For instance,

Haldeman would

shortly approve the hiring of

Donald H.

Segretti

and

GOLDEN BOY

116

the funding of his dirty tricks against Democratic candidates, as well

Senator Edmund Muskie's campaign by John former private investigator who planted an operative inside the Muskie camp. Liddy and Dean were only casually familiar to one another, so Krogh set up a meeting between the two men in November as the infiltration into

Buckley,

a

of 1971 to discuss the

Krogh himself sit

CRP

general counsel job. Liddy insisted that

he

in because, as

later

wrote, "with Dean,

it's

always

best to have a witness anyway."

Dean

testimony and in his book, that this was the first time he had ever met Liddy, we have seen, the two had known one another for more than a

meeting but, as

later claimed,

in

Bud Krogh's

in his

office

year.

Liddy reported entering the room.

in his

Dean

own told

book. Will, that immediately upon

Liddy that both Liddy and Caulfield

might be required "to go into the closet for a while" to create for the campaign an "absolutely first-class intelligence operation." Was Dean talking about Sandwedge? Liddy asked. Dean responded that something more sophisticated was required. Liddy recollects that Dean encouraged him to think bigger, and then gave him a copy of Sandwedge and said, "This has been judged inadequate, so you'll have a pretty good idea of what you'll have to come up with to be adequate." When Liddy said that thinking big would cost money, Dean mentioned "half a million for openers," and Liddy topped him by suggesting that an additional half-million would probably be required. "No problem," Liddy quoted Dean as replying. Dean's recollection of this meeting contains no suggestion of his own pushing of an intelligence operation or of any mention of money. Had he testified to those things, he might have placed himself squarely in the planning of the intelligence operations that got out of hand in the spring of 1972. Did Dean help transform Sandwedge into another intelligence operation, or not? In 1973 and 1974, while Dean was spinning his own tale to the Senate and to the prosecutors, Liddy was in jail and had vowed to maintain silence on all matters pertaining to Watergate. Krogh says he simply can't remember which man's version is true. Liddy 's version of this meeting is a late one, published in his 1980 book. But there is corroboration for Liddy's side from E. Howard Hunt. In his own memoir. Undercover, published in 1974, Hunt recounted the story of an excited Liddy, fresh from this November 1971 meeting. "I've just come from John Dean's office, and you'll never guess what the Attorney General wants me to do," Hunt quoted Liddy as saying. "The ACj wants me to set up an intelligence organization for the campaign that'll be big, Howard, and important." Asked for details.

— Sandwedge Becomes GEMSTONE Liddy

replied,

a million for

"Dean

tells

me

there's plenty of

openers, and there's

more where

117

—half

money available came from.

that

A

lot

more."

That meeting between Liddy, Krogh, and Dean occurred in late November, evidently just before Dean and Liddy met with Attorney General John Mitchell, on November 24 moments after Mitchell had

—

talked to Caulfield about the job as a security

man

for the campaign.

There is some dispute as to what happened when Liddy, Dean, and Mitchell met. The conferees had eighteen items on their agenda; most involved legal matters Liddy would handle as the new CRP attorney, and only one item was labeled "intelligence." Both Liddy and Mitchell told us that they had so much else to discuss that they never got to that one. Dean's

only

tee, differs

slightly:

own

version, given to the Senate

"There was

virtually

commit-

no discussion of

intelli-

gence plans, other than that Liddy would draw up some sort of plans."

Liddy says there wasn't even that. He was so upset about the lack of mention of the subject that he pressed Dean for word on whether there would be a further meeting "to discuss what I understood to be my principal mission, intelligence," and, according to Liddy,

on

his

—ordered him

own

to start

work

Dean then

"as soon as possible"

on

a plan

that could be submitted to Mitchell.

With the help of Hunt, and mindful of the $ 1 million Dean had promised would be "no problem," Liddy did let his imagination loose.

He

called his plan

GEMSTONE;

related surreptitious notions

(OPAL,

the plan contained a bracelet of

EMERALD, GARNET)

includ-

ing infiltration of Democratic campaigns, electronic eavesdropping

on

Democrats in airplanes and on their telephones, use of prostitutes to compromise the Democrats, counterdemonstrations, sabotage of airconditioning units at the Democrats' convention hall, and clandestine entries at the headquarters of Senators Muskie and George McGovern, at a hotel near the convention, and at a fourth site later to be determined. Liddy wanted to present this to Mitchell for funding, but kept getting delayed by other jobs. One of these was a direct request from Dean to accompany Jack Caulfield to

New

York to audit the operations of Tony Ulasewicz.

Liddy decided to present himself

to the president's private

George." In his memoir, Liddy reported that the first-rate

man

eye as "Mr.

called

Tony kept

records in which he accounted meticulously for every cent

These reLiddy wrote, were "a time bomb, waiting to go off; everywhere he had gone, and virtually everything he had done, could be recon-

he'd spent above his then-current $36,000 annual salary. cords,

GOLDEN BOY

118

approved the audit on the spot and urged him to more Hke them." For his part, Ulasewicz was not about to destroy those records, for they were good insurance against being dropped suddenly by his White House patrons. After the January 10, 1972 audit, when he had evistructed from them.

I

destroy the records and not to generate any

dently gained his auditor's confidence, Tony listened, fascinated but

somewhat

appalled, as

Mr. George described the more

fanciful aspects

of an offensive intelligence plan for the reelection campaign. Ulasewicz

thought Mr. George's "screws were coming loose," and when asked if he would be ready for duty in the "war" against the Democrats, Tony

he was available for assignments, but made a mental promise to himself that his answer to any of the specific requests said that as a private eye

by Mr. George would be

On January

" ''nyet.

two months after Dean had stirred Liddy to Liddy presented his $1 million scheme, together with charts professionally drawn by Hunt's CIA cohorts, to a group gathered in the attorney general's office that included Mitchell, Magruder, and Dean. Mitchell, whose interest was in collecting information on potential demonstrations and disruptions at the Republican convention, listened patiently, puffing on his pipe, but even Liddy could see that the AG was more troubled than pleased by the presentation. When later questioned by the Senate, Mitchell characterized Lidbegin work on

27, 1972,

a plan,

dy's imaginative plan as

complete horror story that involved a mish-mash of code names and

a

lines of authority, electronic surveillance, the ability to intercept aircraft

communications, the

was of such pale. this

call-girl bit

striking content

... As

I

recall,

I

told

and

all

the rest of

and concept that

him [Liddy]

was not what we were interested

in.

to

it

it.

was

.

.

.

just

The

matter

beyond the

go burn the charts and that

What we were

interested in

was

matter of information gathering and protection against the demonstra-

a

tors. I

Asked why he did not throw Liddy out of the committee, "In hindsight,

of the office,

own

I

his office, Mitchell told

not only should have thrown

I

him out

should have thrown him out of the window." In their

appearances before the Senate, both Dean and Magruder agreed

that Mitchell had been appalled

by Liddy's presentation.

At the time, though, when the meeting ended Liddy angrily castigated Dean for not having supported him after he had earlier given

Liddy reason such

a plan.

—and

a

—

proposed dollar figure

Dean and Magruder

mollified

to believe the

AG wanted

Liddy by suggesting that he

Sandwedge Becomes GEMSTONE cut the budget in half,

down

119

Sandwedge, and try again, A week later, on February 4, in a meeting with the same cast of characters, Liddy did so. As described by Liddy in Will, Mitchell looked at the papers Liddy brought and said he'd have to "think about it." Dean then cut in and, in a grandstanding manner, shot Liddy

down

to the size of

in midflight, interrupting the presentation

that this

was not

fit

subject matter to be decided

with the observation

by the

office of the

attorney general of the United States but that the decision should

from "completely left

unofficial channels."

Angry and

frustrated,

come

Liddy

the meeting.

According to Dean's Senate committee testimony, after the FebruDean supposedly reported to Haldeman what had

ary 4 meeting

Dean later claimed to have told Haldeman that what Liddy had presented to Mitchell was "incredible, unnecessary and unwise," and that "no one at the White House should have anything to do with this." Having obtained Haldeman's agreement on this point. Dean then said he had "no further dealings on the matter." It was a good story Dean told, but it wasn't true. Haldeman had no occurred.

memory

—

of this meeting with Dean in early February a meeting that would have exculpated him. Haldeman wrote in his book that Dean later "reminded" him so many times about the meeting, "I eventually believed it." Only when he reviewed his office logs years after the event was Haldeman "surprised" to learn that "no such meeting with Dean took place. It just didn't happen." It is likely that Dean made up the Haldeman meeting so that he could say that he. Dean, had said no to Liddy in February, and backed up that no by reporting it to his superior, Haldeman. Back at the Committee to Re-elect the President, Liddy had taken over control of Donald Segretti, and in mid-February Magruder instructed him to grab potentially damaging information "that would blow Muskie out of the water," documents that supposedly lay in the safe of Las Vegas newspaper publisher Hank Greenspun. The tip had come from Robert Bennett, head of Mullen & Company, through Hunt. That should have made it suspect of itself, since the public relations agency was a CIA front and Hunt was still working for the Mullen firm, but it did not. Liddy and Hunt flew first to Los Angeles to confer with a security man for Howard Hughes, who wanted other documents thought to be in Greenspun's safe, and they all agreed to work together, but the caper was aborted before it went any further. Another plum given to Liddy by Magruder was to be, in effect, operations officer for SEDAN CHAIR, which placed an infiltrator in the Muskie camp, and for the project run by former private investigator

GOLDEN BOY

120

John Buckley, alias "Fat Jack," which passed documents from the Muskie camp to the CRP and which Liddy dubbed RUBY I in his GEM STONE plan. Shortly, Magruder placed under Liddy another operative, Thomas J. Gregory, a friend of Robert Bennett's nephew, who was also sent into Muskie's organization as a spy and code-named

RUBY

II.

Another assignment had to do with an investigation of the Democrats' campaign financing, which Liddy wrote up as a memo for Mitchell, routed through Magruder, dated March 15, 1972. Liddy assumed that this memo was going to be taken to John Mitchell, but it was not. There was another sponsor. In fact, Magruder was keeping Liddy and all Liddy operations away from Mitchell; by his own admission, for instance, Magruder would later keep yet a third revised GEMSTONE plan from being reviewed by Mitchell for nearly two more months after the February 4 meeting. But the very day he got Liddy 's memo of March 15, A4agruder walked it over to John Dean as Dean would later testify to the Watergate committee. At the side of one paragraph of the memo, which described an alleged 25 percent kickback to the Democrats from an exposition to be held at the Fontainebleu Hotel and Convention Hall during the time of the Democratic convention in Miami, Dean scribbled, "Need more info." Dean sent Tony Ulasewicz to Florida to get the same information. Dean often utilized two routes to obtain something he wanted. Why would Magruder bring a memo to Dean that was addressed to Mitchell and accept it back with only Dean's comments, if Jeb thought he was supposed to report such matters to anyone else? And why would Dean have commented on the matter if as he testified after February he "had no further dealings" on Liddy 's work? That spring of 1972 was a difficult time for Gordon Liddy; he felt uneasy, because as long as Magruder controlled the purse strings of these piecemeal operations he was conducting, and he himself had no authorized budget, Liddy was not in control. As the day-to-day manager at the CRP, Magruder had near-blanket authority to dispense funds, and indeed he had authorized committee official Herbert L. "Bart" Porter to dole out money to Liddy for his various undercover projects. By March, Liddy had drawn about $25,000, but was angry because "Magruder was in a position to call the shots. I began to suspect he was delaying a decision on GF^MSTONE deliberately, to

—

—

—

maintain this control over intelligence operations.

He

was, after

all, a

Haldeman man." As the quote shows, for more than a decade after the events of Watergate, Gordon Liddy believed that Magruder had been acting for

Sand wedge Becomes Haldeman, and that the

fund

refusal to

because Haldeman was trying not to

mand

GEMSTONE

let

121

GEMSTONE

came about com-

Mitchell have complete

of the reelection campaign.

Magruder did continue to report to Haldeman after he left White House for CRP, but through Gordon Strachan, whom Haldeman designated as liaison with the CRP. Magruder didn't like this arrangement one bit, for Strachan was junior to him and several In fact,

the

However, Strachan later told the Senate Watergate committee that although he reported to Haldeman on all matters years younger.

political, that

did not include intelligence operations. "As to the subject

Dean was designated

of political intelligence gathering, however, John as the

White House contact

Committee

for the

to Re-elect the Presi-

dent," Strachan testified, adding that,

As a result, my inquiries about political intelligence were slight. Mr. Haldeman seldom had me attend meetings on the subject. He rarely asked

me

to him.

a

question about the subject and so

Nor did Mr. Dean

report to

area of political intelligence.

.

.

.

follow-up inquiries with Mr. operations, he responded that

followed

up with Mr. Dean, he

On

me

I

seldom reported about

about

all

when

those occasions

I

Haldeman about political I should let Dean handle rarely advised

me

it

his activities in the

in

any

made such intelligence it.

When

detail

I

about

the status of intelligence matters. Instead, he dealt directly with

Mr.

Haldeman. In this same passage of testimony, Strachan also advised the Senate investigators

"where the documentary proof on

this point

is

located,"

but the Senate committee did not follow a lead that might have badly their major witness against the president. What the commitmight have learned was not as Strachan thought that Haldeman

impugned tee

—

had placed Dean in charge of political intelligence. Rather, the committee might have discovered, as we have, that Haldeman had done no such thing but that Dean had convinced Strachan otherwise.

—

Magruder grew, and he threatMagruder. "This isn't working out, Gordon," Magruder remembered responding. "I can't work with people who talk about killing me. We've got to

Eventually, Liddy's frustration with

ened

— Liddy says jokingly—

to kill

have a change."

"That's fine with me," Liddy said (in the version of the story that

Magruder reported punk like you."

in his book), "I'm sick of screwing

around with

a

122

GOLDEN BOY

Both men decided Liddy would be better off elsewhere. Liddy admired Maurice H. Stans, who had recently resigned as secretary of commerce to become the chairman of the CRP finance committee, which because of a new campaign finance law was shortly going to need a general counsel of its own. Liddy says that he decided to ask for that job. iMagruder claims he opened it up as a possibility. Even if Magruder did not originate it, he was clearly delighted at any idea that would get rid of Liddy, and knew from being in the previous two GEMSTONE meetings that perhaps Mitchell also would not mind. Opposition to losing Liddy entirely from the intelligence operation came from the White House, from Dean and Strachan. Upon learning of the possibility of Liddy's departure, Dean called Magruder and told him, "Don't let your personal feelings about Liddy get in the way of an important operation." Magruder agreed that the operation was indeed important, and as he recounts in his memoir, "That afternoon I went to see Strachan at the White House and we discussed the Liddy problem." Haldeman's deputy Strachan echoed precisely what Dean had said on the phone, and in virtually the same phrases. Strachan, reports Magruder, "urged me to put aside my personal feelings, because we needed the intelligence-gathering program and Liddy was our number-one professional in that area."

Magruder wrote transfer to the finance intelligence chief," a

it was finally agreed that Liddy should committee "but continue to report to me as our decision that Magruder also noted was taken

that

without informing Mitchell. Shortly, Magruder, under pressure from Dean and Strachan at the White House, told Liddy to try formulating a third intelligence plan,

with an even further reduced budget, that they could again present to Mitchell.

8

THE BAILLEY

CONNECTION

ON

March

30,

1972, there was an important meeting in

Key

Biscayne, Florida, that, through a circuitous route, eventually led to the Watergate break-in. Reports of this meeting differ dramatically,

one from another, and the substance of their differences is what has laid a cover of fog over the real Watergate story from 1972 to the present day.

To put the meeting

in context,

Gordon Liddy's transfer effect on Monday, March

back

at

the

CRP

headquarters,

Maurice Stans's finance committee took Liddy believed he was through with Jeb expected to be in the campaign intelligence

to

27.

Magruder, though he still business if there was approval of a modified GEMSTONE plan. In the White House, as we shall see, John Dean also was thinking about GEMSTONE and hoping for its approval, but for another reason. Gathered in shirt-sleeves and casual wear at John Mitchell's quarters at Key Biscayne on March 30 were Mitchell, who had recently left the Justice Department to become head of CRP, and his chief lieutenants, Frederick C. LaRue and Jeb Magruder, as well as another Mitchell aide, Harry S. Flemming. Mitchell appeared tired and haggard, the

123

GOLDEN BOY

124

two factors: his grilling by the Senate over allegations of a between the Nixon administration and the International Telephone and Telegraph Corp. to help finance the Republican convention, and the deterioration into alcoholism of his wife, Martha. There were about thirty items two full iMagruder briefcases of material to be gone over and decided upon, and the men went through them one by one for many hours, including a break for lunch. When it came time to discuss the GEMSTONE plan, through prior arrangement of LaRue and Magruder, a way was found to excuse Flemming from the room so that only three men would discuss the plan. LaRue had placed it at the end of the long agenda. Magruder has in the past claimed that Mitchell authorized a modi-

result of

secret deal

—

fied

—

GEMSTONE plan of this meeting,

and, specifically, a break-in at

remembered ten minutes of discussion on the Liddy proposal and Mitchell scribbling on the paper outlining the proposal. In his book, Magruder commented, "I assumed that Haldeman wanted it, because I had asked Strachan if Haldeman had any comments to make on the proposal, and Strachan replied that the plan was all right with Haldeman if it was all right with Mitchell." In testimony, under questioning by Watergate committee chief counsel Sam Dash, Magruder said that this was when Mitchell approved the plan. Later, braced by Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr., vice the Watergate. Magruder

chairman of the committee, he identified the

testified that Mitchell

DNC as a break-in target.

had

Magruder adhered

specifically

to the

same

story in his book, writing that Mitchell personally approved a quartermillion-dollar budget for the scaled-down

GEMSTONE.

Mitchell consistently denied that he ever discussed an illegal breakin

with anyone, and insisted that he never granted an approval. He told paper he saw con-

the Watergate committee that the

GEMSTONE

tained no mention of break-ins or wiretaps and that

have been under pressure by someone to get

some

Magruder must Liddy plan

sort of

okayed. Mitchell testified he forcefully rejected the plan and told

Magruder, "We don't need this, I am tired of hearing it out, let's not discuss it any further." In fact, Magruder was under extreme pressure from the White House. And, as Magruder has now admitted to us, Mitchell did not approve the DNC as a break-in target. "We [CRP] weren't the initiators," Magruder told us, and reminded us that "the first plan we got had been initiated by Dean. Mitchell didn't do anything. All Mitchell did is just what I did, was acquiesce to the pressure from the White House." At a later point in our interview, he confirmed this again, saying, "The target never came from Mitchell." We believe that Magru-

The Bailley Connection

125

der has not gone far enough in his partial retreat from his earHer claims.

GEMSTONE at all, but pushed off the plan been led to mistakenly believe Haldeman wanted. LaRue told the Watergate committee that he had read the plan, and that when Mitchell sought his opinion of it, LaRue said he didn't think much of it and that Mitchell then responded, "Well, this is not something that will have to be decided at this meeting." When asked by Dash if Mitchell had rejected the plan out of hand at the meeting, LaRue said no. In an interview with us, LaRue explained that Mitchell Mitchell did not approve that he had

could not have identified a target because "he didn't even approve the

He

bugging."

insists that

he has a vivid recollection of the meeting and

that Mitchell did not approve the plan at that meeting. "I have

doubt

my mind

in

about

my

no

recollection of that meeting," he told us.

Magruder was trapped between the pressure from Dean at the White House and Mitchell's repeated annoyed refusals to approve GEMSTONE on behalf of the CRR So trapped, we believe, that Magruder gave the CRP's go-ahead to fund the scaled-down GEMIn fact,

STONE without Mitchell's approval, using the funds that were already under Magruder's own control.

Magruder claims he

Liddy about the plan's word through Robert Reisner, Magruder's assistant. Magruder also wrote that he did call Strachan at the White House to inform him of this and other Mitchell "decisions." As we have seen, Strachan was reporting to Haldeman about intelligence matters through Dean, so Magruder's call was really a report to Dean that the revised GEMSTONE had been approved. Gordon Liddy now thinks that Magruder didn't try very hard to reach him in person just then, because Magruder "couldn't stand to be In his book,

tried to call

approval, was unable to reach him, and sent

in

my

off."

presence, especially after the time

He

also recalls that the

—

week

I

told

him

I'd tear his

arm

prior to the Magruder-Mitchell

—

meeting in Key Biscayne when he wasn't talking to Magruder he was talking to Dean. Furthermore, Liddy says, he had no knowledge that the Key Biscayne meeting of Mitchell and Magruder was going to take place. project,

When Bob

Reisner called to give Liddy a "go" on his

some time around the

first

of April, the approval

came out of

the blue.

Moreover, Liddy understood this "go" as enabling action at the forthcoming Democrats' convention in Miami, especially since Reisner

made no mention of any other target, such as the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate. As far as Liddy was concerned, the "project" was in Miami. Since he knew that the Democratic

convention, always the primary target of

GEMSTONE,

was not

GOLDEN BOY

126

going to convene until July, and it was just the beginning of April, he didn't drop everything and proceed with haste, as he would have if the

had been the

target

DNC headquarters.

Swamped with

other business,

Liddy relayed the "good news" to Hunt, asked him to alert his team of Miami operatives, and dove back into collecting campaign money for Stans.

The new

federal election law

was to take

effect April 7. After that

donations would have to bear a donor's name, and might be

date,

all

made

public, an exposure that

reelection

some

potential contributors to Nixon's

wished to avoid. So, many large donations to the CRP had and collected before April 7; Liddy served as a prime

to be arranged collection

Once

man

for that effort.

the deadline passed, Liddy showed Stans's deputy

Hugh W.

now approved $250,000 intelligence budget and asked immediate $83,000. In short order, Sloan gave him 830 onehundred-dollar bills, most of which Liddy conveyed to the CRP security chief, former CIA agent James W. McCord, Jr., to buy equipment, especially a $30,000 bug-and-transmitter. When Sloan asked for an accounting, and Liddy started to detail just what was being done with the money, Sloan backed away and told him the accounting wouldn't be necessary after all. Sloan, Jr., his

for an

In early April, at about the

same time

as the

Liddy-Hunt-McCord

plans for infiltrating the Democratic convention were being readied,

other events were taking place that would shortly, and very drastically, alter the target of that infiltration.

Washington attorney named Phillip Bailley was in his late twenties, wide-tied Catholic University

Those Mackin a

events concerned a

handsome,

Law School

young

Bailley. liberal, long-haired,

graduate with a modest

practice in the district that others described as "small-time, small

crime."

though

He

represented petty criminals, drug dealers, and prostitutes,

a large

portion of his practice was the representation of indigent

defendants assigned to him by the courts. His business card was

emblazoned with the word peace, and the number and variety of his female conquests was the stuff of legends. He had an inordinate ability to persuade young women to sleep with him, then to pose nude as he photographed them. Interested in politics, he was always on the fringe of people who were going somewhere, though he himself was not. In his college and law school days he had attached himself to such young Maryland Democrats as Stenny Hoyer, later to become a congressman, and R. Spencer Oliver, who ran successfully for the national presidency of the Young Democrats. Bailley claimed to have been a lieuten-

d

The Bailley Connection

127

ant of these men; others point out that most of his duties seemed those

of a hanger-on and chauffeur. His model, Bailley said, was not

Kennedy but Bobby Baker,

the friend of

Bobby

Lyndon Johnson's who had

parlayed his connections into a lucrative lobbying career before he

landed in

"most

In law school, Bailley had been voted the classmate

jail.

likely to

be disbarred."

Phil Bailley's practice included representing

party

girls,

and

this,

group of herself "Erika," or Cathy Dieter. into an alliance with a

know it name was Erika

Bailley did not

and

real

many

prostitutes

and

plus his free-swinging lifestyle, had spilled over

women headed by one who

at that time,

called

but Cathy Dieter's true identity

L. "Heidi" Rikan, a

1964 and 1966 had performed as a stripper

at

woman who between

Washington's Blue Mirror

club in the notorious 14th Street district.

Cathy/Heidi was forced to leave another sex-for-money operation that had been closed by the police, and was about to manage a new one an apartment complex known company of Bailley, Cathy/Heidi at

as the

Columbia

Plaza.

Often

in the

Georgetown bars as Nathan's, where the line between young women out to have a good time and those not adverse to going to bed with a man for pay was often hard to discern.

One

recruited at such

evening in the

summer

of 1971, at Nathan's,

Cathy/Heidi showed Bailley photographs of herself with another young

woman, taken

Lake Tahoe. According to Bailley's later written were in a chorus line pose, "both in bikinis with right legs raised off ground to their left and hands on each other's shoulders." Cathy/Heidi said the name of the other woman was "Cathat

recollection, they

erine."

women

became known

by code names and nicknames. "Catherine" soon was given the nickname of "Clout." The nickname was significant and reflective of what Cathy/ Heidi believed to be Clout's power in town. Bailley did not ask what the Clout nickname meant, and would not find out until more than a Cathy/Heidi's

friends

to Bailley

decade had passed.

book that soon became overloaded with names, nicknames, and code names matched with phone numbers. Some denoted acquaintances, some girlfriends, some party girls, some prostitutes, and some law clients; there was no attempt to segregate the names by categories. Because of the overload of names, Bailley kept a small pocket address

younger sister Jeannine, who functioned as the secretary in from time to time transferred information from his pocket address book to another address book that was kept in his office. It Bailley's

his office,

GOLDEN BOY

128

contained more than two hundred names, together with a key for

understanding to

whom

Shortly after Labor

Heidi

at

those names referred.

Day

of 1971, Bailley met Clout and Cathy/

Nathan's. Clout was curvaceous, wearing a "white tight

blouse" and jeans that were "painted on," and sporting shoulder-length light

brown

hair tied in a red bandana, long red fingernails, black

mascara, and red rouge. She talked slowly and was quite poised.

At subsequent meetings between Bailley and Cathy/Heidi, there talk of a new source of business for Cathy's ring. Bailley had boasted to Cathy of his former political connections, and she now wanted him to make use of his claimed friendship with Spencer Oliver, who was currently working as the executive director of the Association of State Democratic Chairmen in the DNC headquarters at the Watergate, a short walk away from the Columbia Plaza, the headquarters of Cathy's call-girl ring. The thought was that someone perhaps Oliver would be able to steer "high himself, perhaps another employee rolling pols" to Cathy's Columbia Plaza operation. Bailley, with his well-known powers of persuasion, was asked to go in and find such a person, who could be promised a commission on any customers. It was during this period that Bailley entered the telephone number was

—

for

—

Clout into his pocket address book. Jeannine Bailley remembers second address book the nickname

specifically transferring into the

woman as "Mo Biner." She remembers writing "Clout" with the name "Mo Biner." She also recalls taking messages from "Clout" for her brother on many occasions. She told us that that woman left messages under the nickname "Clout" as well as under "Ms. Biner" and most frequently as "Mo." In the winter of 1971, Bailley went to the DNC to see Oliver, who was away at the time; unable to get to him, he chatted with the receptionist about the good old days working on Bobby Kennedy's Clout, to key with the identification of this

1968 campaign, and took a brief walk-through of the

DNC

offices. In

late February 1972, he tried again, with more success. Oliver was away, though his secretary, Ida M. ("Maxie") Wells, was in, and she agreed, Bailley says, to see him and to give him a full tour of the premises. It's important to note (as Bailley did, just then, and later reported back to Cathy) the locations of Wells and Oliver and the adjacent office used by the chairman of the Democratic State Governors organization in the DNC offices. Wells's desk was near the central reception area, between Oliver's and the Governors' private, enclosed offices. The whole area was backed by an outside wall that gave onto a terrace overlooking Virginia Avenue, on which several secretaries were sitting, having snacks on that warm day. The most important offices, of course.

.

The Bailley Connection

129

—

were on the outside corners of the space those of DNC Chairman Larry O'Brien, the campaign treasurer, and two other officials. O'Brien's office was as far away from the OHver/Wells/Governors' area in the physical setup as

Avenue

mathematically possible;

as the reader will see

at all,

it

did not face Virginia

from the diagrams reprinted

following this page It

rank

was

from the location of offices that Oliver was a middlebest, though he had the perk of an office that backed on

clear

man

at

the shared terrace. Bailley told us he learned that Oliver traveled a lot

and that the Governors'

office was almost always vacant. what Cathy Dieter had in mind. he then found someone at the DNC with

was, in

It

short, a perfect setup for

Bailley says

could do business, telling her, "I have friends

of-town people happy

at night."

He

educated ladies and that they were

who

whom

he

can make your out-

stressed that these

were college-

just across the street, referring to

Columbia Plaza. According to Bailley, meetings and phone calls with Cathy and the

at this

and

in

subsequent

DNC

Bailley, the

contact

agreed to take part in the operation.

Though

her major telephonic contact would be Cathy Dieter,

messages from Bailley's

DNC

contact or the party girls themselves

could also be relayed through Bailley and his recalls, his

office.

Often, Bailley

contact wanted to talk directly to the nicknamed

women

explain dates, times, and sexual preferences. After the dates,

to

Cathy

would frequently call to see if the men had had a good time. Bailley believed that such calls were invariably made or received, unobserved, from the private phone in Oliver's office while Oliver was away, although the calls may actually have been made from the nearly always vacant Governors' office.

Crucial to understanding what follows

name Clout

referred

to

is

this:

Counsel to the President John Dean. Dean would husband. In her

Elizabeth

own

Mo

Biner's code

her ongoing romance with White

book, "A/o,"

A

later

House become her

Woman's View of Watergate, Maureen related that she had met John Dean

Kane Owen Biner Dean

in California in

Washington

in

1970, fallen in love, and at his behest had

come

to

January of 1971. She had taken a low-level secretarial

Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, one that did not background check to be done by the FBI. At twenty-five, according to her own story, Biner had already been married twice. The first marriage was annulled on the grounds that George Owen, her first husband, had not previously and properly divorced another woman; the second was ended by Michael Biner's death in an automo-

job at the

require a

WATERGATE OFFICE BUILDING

AND HOWARD JOHNSON'S MOTOR LODGE 2600

block of Virginia Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C.

VIRGINIA AVENUE

"A

r~

PLOT PLAN 20

40

60

HO

100

"' I

SCALE IN FEET

DEMOCRAT/C NATIONAL COMMITTEE HEADQUARTERS SIXTH-FLOOR PLAN

GOLDEN BOY

130

A

bile accident.

former stewardess and insurance agency employee, first Washington job only a few weeks before

she had stayed in her

moving up

new

to a $10,000-a-year post as assistant to the director of the

National Commission on Marijuana and

Drug Abuse, She

traveled

Dean also was required to do a lot of traveling by She recounts that she lived with John at his two-bedroom

a great deal, just as

his

own

job.

town house

in Alexandria,

but since the straitlaced

men

of the

Nixon

administration frowned on premarital alliances, she also stayed fre-

quently in the Washington apartment of

book

identifies in her

Tahoe. There Recently,

is

as

Heidi Rikan,

a friend.

whom

That

friend she

she had met in Lake

even a picture of Heidi in Maureen Dean's book.

we have

received confirmation that this photograph of

photograph of the woman who called herself Cathy came from a former law enforcement officer who was very familiar with the 1972 criminal investigation and indictment of Bailley and who had personally interviewed Cathy Dieter and identified the Rikan photograph as being that of Cathy Dieter. xMaureen Biner met Heidi Rikan through George Owen, then a scout for the Dallas Cowboys who would become Maureen's first husband. After her second marriage ended, Maureen stayed with Rikan in Lake Tahoe for several months. She also spent a month with her in Washington during the first half of 1969, and in her book describes that at that time, "Heidi was single, well-to-do, and had plenty of spare time." The two women drove across the country. From the late 1960s onward, Erika L. "Heidi" Rikan/Cathy Dieter lived a life in Washington, D.C., on the fringes of the law. In Washington, Heidi/Cathy was a girlfriend of Joe Nesline, who was called by police and reporters "the godfather of illegal gambling" in the capital, and the District's best-known underworld figure. The relationship between Heidi/Cathy and Nesline was confirmed to us by a Washington police detective who had investigated Nesline in the early 1970s and by Heidi Rikan

is

a

Dieter. Confirmation

others

who knew

Heidi/Cathy.

At the beginning of 1971, after Maureen had met John Dean in California, fallen in love, and agreed to come with him to Washington, she wrote, "I 'moved in' with Heidi My mail came to Heidi's apartment, most of my clothes were deposited there." However, she wrote, most of her time was spent with Dean at his two-bedroom town house in Alexandria except when Dean was on a trip. Then she stayed with Rikan. She also borrowed some of Heidi's glamorous clothes, such as a black sable coat, for formal occasions at the White .

.

.

—

House.

Maureen

Biner's acquaintanceship with Bailley,

and the true iden-

The Bailley Connection

131

of her friend Heidi, have never previously been revealed.

tity

the keys to understanding

all

They

are

the events of the break-ins and cover-ups

we know under the omnibus label of Watergate. At about the same time that Bailley was helping to

that

Cathy/Heidi's Columbia Plaza operation at the

up an arm of John Dean also

set

DNC,

The

developed an interest in the Watergate headquarters.

roots of his

had been demonstrated earlier, in October 1971, when, as the reader will recall, based on a Colson tip Dean had asked Jack Caulfield to investigate the "Happy Hooker" ring in New York. This was when Caulfield had come back with nothing that could be used, because the dirt obtained on the Democratic clients of the ring would be canceled out by the dirt on the Republican clients. Dean continued to be interested in salacious political material, and that interest also pointed him toward the Watergate, at just about the same point in time at which Cathy/Heidi's Columbia Plaza operation was getting started. That was when he had Caulfield send Ulasewicz on the walk-through of the DNC described in an earlier chapter. interest

With this order. Dean effectively left his fingerprints all over what would become the target of the Watergate break-ins the DNC. Even Dean himself has not claimed that Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, or any other CRP or Nixon administration official was involved prior to the time of the Ulasewicz walk-through in any of the events that would lead directly to the Watergate break-ins, nor that any of those officials had identified the DNC as a potential target. In November 1971, when Ulasewicz took his walk through the DNC, Gordon Liddy had not yet been hired to work at CRP, John Mitchell was still attorney general, and GEMSTONE had not yet even been proposed. We asked Dean about this, and included in our question the information that Caulfield had told us he had received the order from him. Dean at first "unequivocally" denied giving any such instruction to Caulfield, but toward the end of our interview suggested that there were a number of occasions on which Caulfield (and, separately, Liddy) would come to him when he was very busy, and sort of half-mention

—

an idea: I've watched them both, take, ah, you know, just, ah, the tiniest thing, you know, ah, you know, when I'm off doing 400 other things, or

anybody

else, a

Mitchell or a Magruder, busy on other things, and then

coming by and, you know, about

this, is that a

[saying]

"Hey, John, what do you think a grunt [from me,

good idea?" And, you know,

And [him] going damn command.

meaning], "Whatever you think, Jack."

something, taking [my grunt]

like a

.

.

.

off and doing

— GOLDENBOY

132

If

then

it

was not Dean

who was

it?

who

asked Caulfield to go into the Watergate,

Who among

his superiors

knew

or even suspected

at that point in

time? Asked by us

if

DNC

from the

that valuable intelligence information could be gleaned

they had been aware

of, let

alone

ordered, a Caulfield pass-through, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell,

and Magruder all said no. Had Dean learned that lonely out-of-town Democrats were using his girlfriend's roommate's call-girl ring through an in-house operative at the DNC? We do not know, but we have been informed by another source, who agreed to speak only if not identified, that Dean and Heidi Rikan were "great friends." During the winter of 1971-1972, Cathy/Heidi's business continued apace, with what Bailley says was at least one client a day being referred through the DNC connections. Other clients included men from the State Department, major hotels in town, a private club, and the Library of Congress. According to Bailley, as the operation grew, some taken by him pictures and other materials about the women were given to Bailley's DNC contact, so that prospective clients could choose among possible dates. Bailley says these photos were concealed by his contact in a safe place in the DNC offices, Bailley's own conquests also were continuing, and as the spring of 1972 began, so did a time of reckoning for them: He would shortly

—

stand accused of violations of the

women April

6,

Mann

Act, the transporting of

across state lines for immoral purposes.

On

young

the morning of

FBI entered Bailley's law office office and his home. Bailley was

1972, four special agents of the

and executed search warrants for his at neither place, but his sister was at the a

number

of items. Included

office when the agents seized among them were the two address books

book and the other address book into which had copied the names. Both address books contained the Jeannine names, nicknames, and telephone numbers of hundreds of women. One was black with gold lettering on the cover, and the second was black with gold letters on a red background. Jeannine Bailley signed a receipt for these few items. At Bailley's residence, the haul was considerably larger and of more obvious sexual content: a movie projector, motion picture and still photographic equipment, more than a hundred photos of women, and a "black and white rawhide whip." Bailley himself was not arrested at that time. Bailley's pocket address

When

the prosecuting attorneys got hold of these Bailley address

books, they evolved their own, military-type way of referring to the

women named

in

asked John Rudy,

them

so as to protect their identities. Recently,

who was

Bailley investigation,

we

the assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the

whether any of the code names

in the Bailley

— The Bailley Connection address books were familiar to him.

He remembered "Greenhouse

—

Nymph" if

133

and some others, and then we asked without elaboration he knew the nickname "Clout." "Yeah, that was another one that sounded familiar. That was, we

called her

hold on,

something

I'll

get

else,

—

Mike M.B."

it

that's military for

though. That was M.B. No, not M.B. Bravo. That's

who we

We

asked him to further identify M.B. "We knew that to be a lady by the name Biner, Binner, Bomer.

No

called

—oh,

of

—no,

Mike Bravo

hell

—

that

was

..."

"Biner?" "Biner,"

Rudy

affirmed.

"Maureen Biner?" we asked again. "Yeah," said Rudy. "I've identified

A

it,

that's

Maureen Biner."

few weeks after the search of Bailley's home and office, Liddy was called in by Jeb Magruder and asked, "Gordon, do you think you could get into the Watergate?" This was a switch, and Liddy didn't like it. Earlier in the month Liddy had been given a "go" on a target he thought to be the Miami Democratic convention, and had asked McCord to order equipment for it. Now, in his view, the target was being changed. Going into the Watergate was not an entirely new thought. Liddy had considered a surreptitious entry there, but in his mind it was something to do later in the year, when and if it had become the headquarters of the Democratic standard bearer as well as the national committee. At the moment, the center of the political stage was occupied by the Democratic primaries, hotly contested between Hubert Humphrey, Edmund Muskie, and George McGovern. The DNC was engaged in setting up a convention for July, and would have to wait until a nominee was chosen to really get into action. Liddy replied that an entry was certainly feasible, though, and Magruder asked him if he could place a bug in Larry O'Brien's office. Liddy objected that it was too late for placing such a bug, since O'Brien was spending most of his time in Miami, readying the convention. Magruder pursued the matter anyway; though O'Brien might be away, Liddy quotes Jeb as saying, "There's still plenty of activity over there. We want to know whatever's said in his office, just as if it was here; what goes on in this office." Liddy thought the demand strange, but acquiesced to it because at least it was action, and was told, "Get in there as soon as you can, Gordon. It's important." It was clear to Liddy that Magruder was not acting on his own, but reports, he

GOLDEN BOY

134

simply passing on orders from someone

At the time, Liddy assumed the directive had come from Mitchell, and in the years that followed, most people have erroneously accepted that idea. But Magruder's order had not come from Mitchell. As we have shown earlier in this chapter,

even Magruder,

who

continues to incorrectly maintain

GEM STONE,

that Mitchell approved

else.

recently admitted to us that

come from the White House, and from John Dean, noting, "The target never came from

pressure to go into the Watergate had specifically

Mitchell."

But there was a specific target when Magruder instructed Liddy, it was "important." A properly cautious break-in would take a few weeks to set up, Liddy thought. A wire-man and the Cubans from Miami would actually go into the DNC. Responding to the need to shield all higherups from a connection to this operation, Liddy did not plan to and

accompany the burglars inside but (as in the instance of Dr. Fielding's office) would remain outside, in case there was any trouble. The point was to ensure that even if someone inside were to be caught, it would not be possible to connect them to the CRP. That was how Liddy understood the task. However, unbeknownst to him (and, most likely, to Magruder, too), although the ostensible focus of this target

break-in was the office of Larry O'Brien, the actual

first

was quite

different.

As Howard Hunt and two of the burglars

recently told us, the real target was the frequently used telephone that

was

in the portion of the

Oliver,

his

secretary

DNC that contained the offices of R.

Spencer

Maxie Wells, and the chairman of the State

Democratic Governors organization. In the interim between the enabling order from

Magruder and the

Watergate break-in, Liddy was kept busy on related matters.

first

He was

asked by Magruder on behalf of White House special counsel Charles

Colson to provide planned

in

men

Washington

to

muck about

for the first

been displayed on the Mall

at

week

in

May.

Hunt had

a

former

A

Vietcong

flag

had

an earlier demonstration, and one was

expected this time; Colson wanted to seize

Bernard L. Barker,

demonstrations being

in antiwar

it

to present to

Nixon.

CIA employee from Miami whom Howard now for GEMmen and mixed roughly with the

recruited for the Dr. Fielding break-in and

S lONE operations,

took a group of

crowd, enough so for Barker to injure

a

hand and

for

Frank A. Sturgis,

another Miami recruit, to be detained by police, but that was

all.

Hunt

and Liddy drove the Miamians around McGovern headquarters and

— The Bailley Connection around the

DNC offices

at the

135

Watergate complex, indicating these as

the sites of future break-ins. In other clandestine matters, Liddy was asked

cash some signed traveler's checks

and

after

he had done

made out

this successfully

by Hugh Sloan

before the April

7

through Barker, had

request from Sloan for help on a similar matter.

to

deadline, a

second

Stans's assistant

five checks. One was a cashier's check for $25,000, name Kenneth H. Dahlberg and dated April 10; this, said represented a contribution made in the Midwest prior to April

showed Liddy bearing the Sloan, 7 that

had been converted by Dahlberg, the Nixon campaign's Midwest

finance chairman, to conceal the

name of

the donor.

The

other four

same purpose but had been made out to Mexican attorney Manuel Ogarrio Daguerre and drawn on Ogarrio's bank account in Mexico City. Sloan wanted Liddy to convert these five checks to $114,000 in cash. Several trips to Miami were necessary before Liddy returned to Sloan's office with $111,500 in brand-new $100 bills (after paying $2,500 in expenses) that had consecutive serial numbers. In addition to this money-laundering, Liddy and Hunt also planned and were about to execute a surreptitious entry into McGovern's headquarters. This entry was aborted because they learned that a recent burglary had caused a Burns Agency guard to be stationed inside the front door every hour of the day. Such shenanigans kept Liddy busy until Monday, May 22, when Barker and the rest of his clandestine team Sturgis, Eugenio Rolando Martinez, Virgilio R. Gonzalez, Felipe De Diego, and Reinaldo Pico came to Washington and moved into the Manger- Hamilton Hotel. checks, totaling $89,000, had the

—

Acting as tourists, the contingent signed the log in the Watergate

complex and went upstairs to get a glimpse of the DNC layout from the hall; Hunt, Liddy says, took an impression of the front-door lock with soft clay. The group also made "familiarization tours" of the Howard Johnson's Motor Inn across the street from the Watergate, which was to serve as a lookout post for the team and the place from which the bugs to be placed inside the DNC offices would be monitored. Finally, the as in daylight.

On

men

toured the Watergate

checked into the Watergate hotel under their

During

itself, in

darkness as well

xMay 26, four days after they arrived, the group aliases.

James McCord, Liddy found odd. Liddy was able to stop his friend before he did something truly dumb: seek FCC approval for the frequencies on which the transceivers were to be operated. Liddy was not able to prevent McCord from disappearing frequently in between assigned meeting times or from reporting

who had

this period of setup

joined the group, did

and casing the

some things

joint,

that

GOLDEN BOY

136

DNC

delays in obtaining the correct bugging equipment for the penetration. Liddy expressed his annoyance

room

Howard Johnson's

McCord

at

for not renting

was properly situated for line-ofsight transmission of stolen conversations from the DNC; McCord's room was on the fourth floor, while the target was on the sixth floor across Virginia Avenue. (Liddy, who believed the target was O'Brien, had not seen the DNC floor plan and did not know that O'Brien's office, which was on the opposite side from the Howard Johnson's, could not be seen at all from the motel.) McCord was able to transfer into a room on the seventh floor, which was better for the clandestine purposes, but Liddy continued to bristle at McCord's sloppiness. There were other mistakes that smacked more of amateurs than professionals. It was difficult to get into the Watergate office building unobserved, but an underground corridor connected the Watergate hotel with the office building; to utilize it, the visitors boldly rented a banquet room with the notion of keeping the fun going until a late hour when all the waiters would have gone home and left them alone, and then traveling through the corridor. The plan went awry. Hunt and McCord blamed an activated building alarm system for scuttling the plan, but author Jim Hougan has revealed that no such alarm existed, and that some other, reason wrecked the scheme. In any case, Saturday night. May 27, they tried again and Liddy was elated when he believed that the team had actually gotten in until a

at the

that

—

they returned to the

"command

post" at Liddy's Watergate hotel

room

with the news that the team hadn't entered the Democrats' stronghold because Gonzalez hadn't brought the proper lock-picking

Liddy sent Gonzalez back to Miami to get Gonzalez returned it was Sunday afternoon. McCord reported to Liddy that all the lights Liddy decreed they should wait until eleven,

tools.

the right tools.

Angry,

When

At 9:45 that evening, were out in the DNC. and go in through the garage-level entrance doors, a route previously suggested by Hunt, that would give the men an hour before the midnight shift change and regular round of inspection made by the new shift of security guards. As Liddy later wrote, lb Hunt's and

my

delight, that's exactly

how

it

went.

McCord

reported

success [the bugs had been placed], and Barker had two rolls of 36-

exposure

35-mm

film he'd

expended on material from O'Brien's desk,

along with Polaroid shots of the desk and office before anything was

touched so that

it

could

congratulated them

all

all

be returned to proper order before leaving.

and we had

I

a small victory celebration in the

The Bailley Connection command

post before going home.

successful.

Or

so

I

The Watergate

137

entry had been

thought.

Liddy did not then know how wrong his estimate was. Although Barker had given him a Polaroid shot of O'Brien's office to show to Magruder which Liddy did, on Monday morning, May 29 the two

—

rolls

of

35-mm

—

film didn't surface for several weeks.

When

they did,

they showed photographs that Liddy (and perhaps Magruder) thought

we shall see, had been taken by the slowness the Miamians demonstrated in getting the film developed, Liddy was even more annoyed when by Wednesday McCord had told him nothing about what the bugs were transmitting. With his Walther air pistol in his briefcase, Liddy went to the Howard Johnson's, where he was ushered into the darkened inner sanctum and spoken to in a hushed voice. McCord showed him complex equipment and a man they all used aliases trying to tune in on the signals coming from the DNC. Two bugs had been planted, McCord said, but only one was being picked up. To Liddy's surprise, there was no tape recorder visible, and he asked why. McCord replied "that while he had a recorder, it proved to had been taken

in O'Brien's office, but, as

somewhere other than

—

that. Frustrated

—

be incapable of adaptation to his receiver because the resistance, stated

ohms, was mismatched." This explanation was technological sand thrown in Liddy's eyes, and Liddy called McCord on it. McCord then floated a second explanation, saying that a compatible recorder was unnecessary in any event because so much of the information coming over from the DNC was useless, and the man at the headphones would type a log of it and "edit out the junk." Liddy responded that he wanted it all, and would do his own editing, and took some of the logs with him. He later wrote that "the logs revealed that the interception was from a telephone rather than a microphone that relayed all conversation in the room, and that the telephone tapped was being used by a number of different people, none of whom appeared to be Larry O'Brien." Precisely so. In a recent interview given for the purpose of this book, and breaking silence after many years, Watergate burglar Rolando Martinez told us that the tap was not placed on Larry O'Brien's telephone, but on one in the Oliver/Wells/Governors' area. We showed him an FBI diagram of the DNC replete with the names and titles of those who occupied the offices at the time and he identified without doubt that area as the target of the bugging. This area was the perfect target for a tap, given that it was directly across Virginia Avenue from the receiving equipment in the Howard Johnson's. O'Brien's office was in

GOLDEN BOY

138

was obviously shielded from line-of-sight transmission by a myriad of intervening walls, beams, electrical cables, and so on. Martinez also confirmed that the photographs had not been unsuitable because

taken in O'Brien's

it

office.

A

second

man

in the break-in,

Frank Sturgis,

recently told us that he had never "been in or near O'Brien's office"

and said that he had received no instructions to enter or to search it. A source within the DNC has told us that she was informed by the FBI in 1972 that the actual bugging target was a phone in the office of the chairman of the Democratic State Governors organization, noting that Spencer Oliver, among others, sometimes used a phone in that nearly always vacant

office.

The man who sat spring and summer of

in the

darkened surveillance room in the

1972 was identified as Alfred C. Baldwin

former FBI agent recruited by McCord. Baldwin would

later

late

III, a

assume

the unique historical position of being the sole Watergate burglary co-

conspirator to be neither indicted nor tried for the crime.

When

questioned by the Senate, Baldwin testified that the bug that

had been placed during the first break-in had worked. In a recent conversation with us, Howard Hunt said that the bugging target was not Wells or Oliver, "they just happened to be on the same phone, that's all."

For corroboration that the phone tapped was in this area, and that the overheard conversations pertained to Cathy/Heidi's call-girl operation,

we have

to leap

ahead in time to the days and weeks after the

burglars had been caught on their second entry into the

DNC

head-

quarters in mid-June 1972. We'll return to that entry in detail in the

next chapter.

The

evidence establishes that in the period just after the

trial was imminent, the government's lead prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl J. Silbert, believed that the fruits of the Watergate break-in were embarrassing tapes of a sexual nature. Baldwin had turned himself in to Silbert, who was preparing to use him as the key witness against Howard Hunt. Silbert believed that Hunt had intended to use the telephone conversations that Baldwin had overheard for purposes of

burglars had been caught and identified, and their criminal

blackmail.

The evidence includes the

fact

that

Baldwin characterized the

conversations he overheard as "explicitly intimate." In addition, federal

prosecutors have confirmed that the telephone tap conversations were "primarily sexual" and "extremely personal, intimate, and potentially

embarrassing." Another piece of evidence comes from

a

lunch Silbert

had with lawyer Charles Morgan, Jr., who was representing Oliver, Wells, and some Democratic officials in several pending cases stemming

The Bailley Connection from the break-in. At before the

this

— month —Morgan was

lunch on December 22, 1972

of the burglars was scheduled to begin

trial

139

a

accompanied by his associate Hope Eastman. Silbert told them, as Morgan later wrote in his book, that "he [Silbert] wanted to use the Democrats' conversations to prove that blackmail was indeed the motive for the Watergate burglary. Exasperated and angry, he looked across the table at me and blurted out, 'Hunt was trying to blackmail Spencer [Oliver] and I'm going to prove it!' " Morgan's book also noted that Morgan had checked with Eastman and she had confirmed to him that his recollection of that important moment was accurate. Howard Hunt vehemently denies that he had any intention to blackmail anyone at the DNC, and we do not have any evidence that he was actually planning to do so. Silbert wanted Baldwin to repeat in open court his recollection of the conversations he overheard. When Baldwin took the stand, Morgan made an objection. Since Morgan was not representing any of the defendants in the criminal case before Judge John Sirica, as Morgan himself admitted in his book, his objection was an "unprecedented long shot." Sirica denied the objection but suspended the trial so that his

Court of Appeals. argument of that appeal. Chief Judge David L. Bazelon, reviewing the request to allow Baldwin to testify, asked Silbert, "Is the government interested in whether this information [that Baldwin had overheard] would be used to compromise these people [Oliver and the DNC]? That is a euphemism for blackmail." Silbert replied that the conversations were "highly relevant" in his quest to lay "a factual foundation so that we can suggest that is what they were interested in We believe this information goes to the motive and intent." The Court of Appeals overturned Sirica's ruling, thereby

ruling could be immediately appealed to the U.S.

During the

oral

.

.

.

prohibiting Baldwin's testimony at the

As

trial

of the burglars.

Court of Appeals ruling, prosecution attempts to pursue theories based on the contents of what Baldwin heard came to an immediate and permanent end. a result of the

Today, Silbert declines to discuss the case

at all.

was bug in the DNC headquarters, and it was transmitting to a receiving room in the Howard Johnson's across the avenue. Liddy was dissatisfied with what he thought were its results, and amazed that no one in the CRP seemed to be pestering him for what information it might be revealing. He had his secretary type up Baldwin's logs, which he had further edited, and retained those in a safe spot. On his own, he kept asking McCord for the photographic fruit of the break-in, and received In early June 1972, as far as the insiders were concerned, there

a

GOLDENBOY

140

rather lame excuses about the difficuhy of having such photographs

who knew how to keep his mouth closed. He had no need for making another surreptitious entry into the Watergate, and thought no one else did, either. But Liddy was really in the dark on this one. Liddy had intentionally been excluded from the knowledge that the target had been switched from O'Brien to a phone in the Oliver/Wells/Governors area. More than that, no one in the CRP knew that CRP employees Liddy and Magruder, and the CRP-funded GEMSTONE operation, were being used as a shield for a criminal act directed from the White House. Recently, Hunt, Martinez, and Sturgis have all confirmed to us that developed by an expert

Hunt

gave the specific targets for the Watergate break-ins to the

But who above Hunt had given this order? To discuss that vital question, we must again jump ahead in time to the period after the burglars had been apprehended and identified. At that time, feeling the pressure, E. Howard Hunt looked for a way to justify, excuse, and possibly to negotiate away the responsibility for his actions. He knew he had the evidence to back him up, evidence that would put knowledge of his actions squarely in the lap of higher-ups. First, however, he had to locate it. Accompanied by his attorneys, in November of 1972 Hunt went to the U.S. Courthouse to examine evidence that had been seized from his safe in the White House. As he burglars.

described the scene in his autobiography

I

searched the seized material for

telephone

list,

operational notebook,

files

he was holding them in another area, but Silbert declared that

if

what

had reviewed was

all

there was.

It

was

sufficient to convict

but any material that could have been used to construct a defense for

my

missing:

which

I

and

but did not find them. Bittman [Hunt's attorney] asked

Silbert I

my

(italics in original),

operational notebooks, telephone

lists

me,

me was

and documents

had recorded the progress of Gemstone from

its

in

inception,

mentioning Liddy's three principals by name: Mitchell, Magruder and

Dean.

At the Senate hearings. Senator Howard Baker listened to Hunt tell that these materials were gone, and asked Hunt, "Can you give me any idea why those notebooks disappeared? What was in them that wouk cause them to be so sensitive if they were found or why they would be] a candidate for destruction, if they were not destroyed?" "Certainly, Senator," Hunt replied. "They would provide a ready handbook by which any investigator with any resources at all couk quickly determine the parameters of the

GEMSTONE operation."

The Bailley Connection Recently, in an interview with us,

The

notebooks, he said, held "the

full

141

Hunt was even more

specific.

operational story of Watergate

he knew it." Moreover, these notebooks "would have implicated Dean long before there was a Watergate cover-up." John Dean did eventually admit that he had destroyed Howard Hunt's notebooks. They were distinctive notebooks, known and referred to as "Hermes notebooks" because they were made by only one company and different from many other types. John Dean shredded as

—

them, and told the prosecutors that he had done so but he ''remembered''' this crucial fact in late 1973, only after he had pleaded guilty to one and only one count of an indictment, and the government had agreed to drop the other counts. We'll examine in a later chapter, and in more detail, the timing of Dean's disclosure of his destruction of Hunt's notebooks, but for the moment let's note only that they were the main documentary evidence that could link

Dean

directly with orders to E.

the Watergate break-in.

Howard Hunt about

THE LAST BREAK-IN

early June 1972. A federal grand jury had been investigating Mackin Bailley since the April seizure of records and photographs from his office and home. Although there had been only one original complainant and the seized materials, Assistant United States Attorney John Rudy had developed charges against Bailley through the testimony of friends and acquaintances, and from several women who

IT was

Phillip

were prepared

to testify

tions included luring

about Bailley's sexual practices.

women somewhere

for sex,

The

allega-

photographing them

nude, then threatening to release the photos unless the women engaged in sexual activities with other people. (None of these allegain the

tions

were ever proven, nor constituted

acts for

which

Bailley

was

convicted.)

Rudy took his time and proceeded carefully, for he knew he would be indicting a practicing lawyer, not some ordinary pimp. In his view, bad apple in the legal system who practiced before the very court that would soon have to bring him to justice. Rudy readied and the grand jury returned on June 9, 1972, a twenty-two-count Bailley

was

a

indictment of Bailley charging violations of the

142

Mann

Act, the federal

The Last Break-In

143

Travel Act, the federal extortion statute, the District of

blackmail statute,

procuring statute.

Columbia

the District pandering statute and the District

The

actions covered in the indictment spanned the

period from Bailley's induction into the Washington, D.C., bar in 1969

up to February of 1972. To the public at large this was,

right

importance.

at best,

Mary Ann Kuhn wrote up

news of only modest

the indictment and an inter-

of the June 9 Washington Daily News, headlined d.c. lawyer charged with white slavery, and the newspaper printed it on an interior page. The first three editions of the

view with Bailley for

a late edition

Washington Star went to press before the story broke; then, rather suddenly, it became page-one news for the Star. The "night final"

bombing of Haiphong and Hanoi with the lurid headline capitol hill call-girl ring uncovered. The story was written by reporters Winston Groom and Woody West. Its lead paragraph read, "The FBI here has uncovered a high-priced call girl ring allegedly headed by a Washington attorney and staffed by secretaries and office workers from Capitol Hill and involving at least one White House secretary, sources said today." It named Bailley as head of that operation and reported that Bailley had edition replaced a top-of-the-paper story about the

denied the charges entirely. "Sources close to the investigation" were cited as saying that clients of the operation

were prominent D.C.

attorneys and that

no high

officials either

on Capitol Hill or

at

the

White House were

involved in running the ring, but they did indicate that a

lawyer was a a

client. It

was learned that

White House employe prompted

a

a

subpoena

phone

call

several

White House weeks ago of

from White House aide

Peter Flanigan to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

No a

one

phone

in the [U.S. Attorney's] office

call

apparently called to find out to the

would acknowledge that such

was made. But sources outside the if

office said

Flanigan

there was any chance of embarrassment

Nixon administration.

How

had the Star found out about Bailley's involvement in the callwhen the Columbia Plaza ring was not mentioned in the indictment? Rudy appears not to have known about it, and his office had not told the reporters, nor had Bailley. Bailley was actually peripheral to the call-girl ring and was not charged with anything having to do with it; he was faced with jail time, disbarment, and fines for his involvement with women who were not part of Cathy/Heidi's Columbia Plaza ring. He would even make this very point much later,

girl

operation

144

GOLDEN BOY

from the federal prison

in

Danbury, Connecticut, when trying

to get

his sentence reduced.

Peter article,

M.

Flanigan, the

White House aide referred to in the Star call from him at the White House to

has denied to us any

Rudy's office while the grand jury was sitting in order to learn if anyone in the Nixon administration was implicated. All sorts of bells would have gone off if there had been that danger, Flanigan says: "A story this weird I believe I would have remembered it, if it had happened, but I have absolutely no memory of it whatsoever. I never heard of Mr. Bailley until [this interview]. I never saw this [newspaper] story until today nor did any reporter at any time before or after ever contact me on this matter." According to the Star reporters, the story developed in the following manner. Around nine or nine-thirty in the morning. Groom picked up the indictment from the court, but although it involved a lawyer it was otherwise so ordinary that he filed something similar to what Kuhn had written for the Daily News. Back at the city room. Woody West believes he must have received other information that took what was actually a second story given or relayed to him from another direction, commingled it with Bailley's indictment, and made the whole thing page-one news. West thought the call-girl information might have come from a reporter that the Star had stationed in the press room at the White House, but can't recall. The Star made plain in the article itself that the information had not come from the U.S. Attorney's office. Moreover, Rudy denies that any such suggestion of a Capitol Hill call-girl ring would have come from his office. Actually, he remembers repeating that denial to John Dean, later on the day that the indictment and article appeared, .

June

.

9.

In an extraordinary move. right off the bat that he

Dean telephoned Rudy

rationale for the call

—

—

identified

The

come

right over

said

and bring

with people involved in the

ley] investigation," so he could determine in the ring.

He

citing the Star story of the ring as his

that the prosecutors

documentary evidence

was involved

directly.

was "calling on behalf of the president of the

United States," and demanded "all

.

if

anyone

in the

[Bail-

White House

night final edition of the Star did not hit

the streets until about 1:30 p.m., and this telephonic

summons was

issued shortly thereafter. Records from the F^xecutive Office Building

John Rudy and his superior, Don Smith, visited John Dean 4:00 p.m. on Friday, June 9, 1972, and we have interviewed John

show at

that

Rudy about

that meeting.

According to Rudy,

after discussing the request

with criminal

The Last Break-In division head

Don Smith and

145

possibly with First Assistant U.S.

Attorney Harold Titus, he and Smith traveled to the White House in a limousine sent for that purpose. As demanded by Dean, the prosecu-

brought with them Bailley's address book and fifty to sixty of the nude photos, which had been seized in early April. Rudy remembered the entire incident with great clarity, down to the gray pin-striped suit and blue shirt Dean was wearing, and the tors

I

He had never before been summoned by the White House, and this was a big deal for him. "That's the kind of stuff," he told us, about which "you stand up and salute and say, 'Yes, sir!' That layout of the office.

was heady Dean's

stuff." first

men was

inquiry after greeting the

they think leaked the information on the

Rudy

didn't

a question:

call-girl ring to

know, and Dean replied that he thought

it

Who did

the press?

had been the

Democrats.

Dean then asked to whom at the White House the story referred. From the materials Rudy brought. Dean selected a possibility. The person Dean picked out was neither a male White House lawyer nor a White House secretary, as the Star had reported and as the Washington would report the next day. Rather, the person was a female employee in an agency across the street, whose picture Rudy had brought with him. Dean noted this, and looked at the other photos. Then he saw the Bailley address book, and it was this that became his main focus. Dean looked closely at the address book and the photos, and informed the men that he wanted to keep the materials over the weekend. This, of course, would have been a gross violation of the maintenance of evidence in a currently pending case, and Smith quite properly said that could not be allowed. As a lawyer. Dean would have known full well that taking possession of the evidence was improper, but he asked for it anyway. When that idea was scotched. Dean

Post

|!

'

returned to staring intently at the address book.

Though he concealed any

sense of this from

could not have avoided seeing the

— Biner "Clout"— and the

alias

name

of her close

Rudy and Smith, he

Mo — "Cathy friend Heidi Rikan

of his live-in girlfriend.

Dieter."

When

he couldn't get hold of the address book for the weekend, he to the next level. He asked if he could copy the address book so he could compare the names in it to "a list of personnel in the White House, to see if the same names appear in both places."

came down

Ordinarily, such a request cutors were, after

all,

would be summarily denied, but the prose-

dealing with the president's lawyer, and Dean's

GOLDEN BOY

146

Dean called in an "older woman" room and photocopied it, he had not known at the time he sat in later told us Rudy John Dean's EOB office that "Mo" Biner was personally connected to John

request was considered reasonable.

who

took the address book to another

Dean. Had he known, he said, "That would have changed the picture whole lot." Rudy stated that the entire proceedings would have had a different character if he had known that Maureen Biner was Dean's lover; that is to say, if Rudy knew that Dean had a personal interest in Baillev's records. Then he would have more properly understood that Dean's motives were personal and that he was not acting "on behalf of the president of the United States." But this was not revealed by Dean. The secretary soon returned with Bailley's address book and the copies of its pages, which Dean then checked to see if all the pages a

were there, and then against the White House personnel list, circling names with a pen as he did so. "He was very meticulous," Rudy told us. After about fortv-five minutes, Rudv and Smith went back to their offices, taking the book and photos but leaving with Dean the

certain

photocopied pages.

A

few days

case for the

later,

file,

in

Rudy wrote

summary

a five-page

which he spent

a

of the Bailley

paragraph detailing the meeting

at the EOB. In a recent interview, he remembered this document especially, because others involved with the prosecution of Bailley complimented him and called it the best summary of the case. As for John Dean, immediately after Rudy and Smith left the EOB, he called a middle-level official in an independent agency across from the White House and told him that one of the female attorneys who served under him had her name in Baillev's book and that he, Dean, had seen her nude picture as taken by Bailley. Called on the carpet, the female attorney, who had no connection to any call-girl ring, said

with Dean

she had briefly been in love with Bailley and denied any wrongdoing.

By

5:30 p.m. that afternoon, she had been forced to resign.

show

Now Dean

meeting with Rudy, should he ever be asked what action he had taken as a result of it. But he did not create any permanent record of his meeting with Rudy and Smith through memos as he to the file, to his superiors, or to the Department of Justice

had

a scalp to

for the

—

—

normally did with important matters and has not spoken publicly, written, or testified about it, ever since. Recently, we asked Haldeman and Lawrence Higby (Haldeman's top aide, and the proper channel for something

about

this matter.

They knew nothing

of a

prosecutors to request evidence earmarked for

We

like the Bailley case)

Dean meeting with a

local

pending criminal case. Dean to go about the

pressed further: Was that the proper way for

The Last Break-In

147

White House in such a sensitive matter? Both men responded that it was not, that a standard procedure had been estabHshed and promulgated. Under it, Dean would be in touch with them, to ask for and receive from them permission to call Assistant Attorney General Henry E. Petersen, head of the criminal division at Justice, and make the request to the prosecutors through that correct task of protecting the

channel. Petersen could have been urged to

make

haste, to

answer

Dean's question and possibly to provide a copy of the address book, and all the answers and materials would have come back through the

same channel from Justice. But if it had been done that way, other people would have known of John Dean's extraordinary interest in the affairs of Phillip Mackin Bailley. Liddy had been having problems with McCord and the material coming from the bug in the DNC. The logs from McCord, which he said came from Baldwin and which Liddy reedited and had his secretary type up, showed nothing of interest. Liddy was almost embarrassed to pass them on. Yet he felt he had to show something, and on June 8 put the transcribed logs in an envelope for Magruder, with expectations that Jeb would give it to Mitchell. According to Magruder, he did pass it on, in two directions. He first showed it to Strachan, who reported back that "It was junk." The next day, in Magruder's account, he had a private meeting at the CRP offices with John Mitchell in which they reviewed the logs. xVlitchell then supposedly called Liddy in and said, "This stuff is not worth the paper it's printed on." Magruder told us that he has a vivid recollection of this meeting and added that it happened so quickly that Liddy didn't even get a chance to sit down. This account, of course, at least implicitly tied John Mitchell to the second break-in.

Once

again, however,

we do

not believe Magruder's account. In his

Senate testimony and later interviews with us, Mitchell denied this meeting with Liddy, or reviewing the logs of the bugging. Liddy also contradicts

Magruder and

says that this meeting never occurred.

In Liddy's account, he was called in to Magruder's office on June

and asked by Magruder if the bug could be replaced. Liddy said it could, but there was no money in the budget for another Watergate entry, and besides, they wanted to go into McGovern's headquarters. Magruder ignored this and asked him how many file cabinets were in the DNC. Then he got to the heart of the matter. Banging the lower left drawer of his own desk, Jeb told Liddy, "Here's what I want to know. I want to know what O'Brien's got right here." 12

that

GOLDEN BOY

148

Liddy understood the reference completely, for in that drawer, he knew, Magruder kept his own derogatory information on the Democrats.

—

Liddy bought the idea hook, line, and sinker so completely that he was convinced when he wrote in 1980 that this was the previously unknown key to the break-in. He shouted it in his book by italicizing his conclusion: ''The purpose of the second Watergate break-in

what O'Brien had of a derogatory nature about

him

us,

was

to find out

not for us to get something

or the Democrats. "

Liddy says that it was not until June 1 5 that he briefly got to see Mitchell and to slip on the corner of Mitchell's desk a blank envelope containing the bugging logs; even at that moment, Liddy says, he was not able to discuss the bugging, and certainly did not receive any direct authorization to go in a second time from Mitchell. He didn't even ask for it, since he already had such authorization from Magruder. Confronted by us with these contradictions, Magruder refused to give up the idea that he had met with Mitchell and Liddy about the logs, but he admitted to us that Liddy 's version of the events was correct and that he, Magruder, had been told by John Dean to obtain derogatory information about Republicans that the Democrats kept at their Watergate headquarters, and that Dean, not Mitchell, had directed him to have Liddy and his men go back into the DNC to obtain on

—

this information.

Magruder was not eager

to give us that

acknowledgment. At

first

he

said only that the order to go back into the Watergate "came from

Strachan or Dean," but

when

the order and said, "I'm sure

pressed, he

it

amended

his attribution of

was Dean."

and she gave a key to her desk to another woman at the DNC, Barbara Kennedy, for use in case the desk had to be opened while she was away. Maxie was back at work by June 12, and on that day received at the DNC a visitor who announced himself as "Bill Bailey." He was actually Mc(>ord's man Alfred Baldwin, and he bore a strong physical resemblance to Phil Bailley. He had been sent into the DN(], he later told the Senate investigating committee, by McCord, in order to get the layout of the place. He knew before he entered that both Larry O'Brien and Spencer Oliver were out of town. lo receptionist Clota Yesbeck he expressed disappointment, and was passed on to Maxie Wells. Later, in her own debriefing by the Senate committee, Yesbeck said that she believed Baldwin had been in the DNC to see Maxie many times before but she may well have been confused by

Maxie Wells went on vacation

—

in early June,

The Last Break-In the

name he

Bailley,

Then

149

gave her on entering and his physical resemblance to Phil

who had been

too, the Bailey

in

and out of the

name was one

DNC

more than

a

few times.

to conjure with inside the

Demo-

was borne by an important Democrat from Connecticut; Baldwin has at times said that he claimed to have been that Bailey's nephew, though at other times has not pressed this notion. But why would McCord have sent Baldwin in to get the lay of the land, if there had already been a break-in and the burglars already knew the setup? There must have been another reason. Baldwin made sure that he saw Maxie Wells by telling Yesbeck that he was a friend of Spencer Oliver's. Yesbeck passed him on, and returned to her duties in the reception area. Then something happened either between Baldwin and Wells, or while Baldwin was in proximity to Wells's desk. We can't say precisely what, but we do know that after the burglars were caught, the key to Maxie's desk was found in the possession of burglar Rolando Martinez. The presence of the key was one startling thing. Another was the absence of any in-place bug or transmitting device. Just a day or two before the second break-in on June 1 7 but after Baldwin's visit the telephone company swept the DNC phones for bugs and found none. And just after the break-in, the police and the FBI made their own sweeps and found no in-place bugs. In other words, the bug that had been installed during the first break-in, on the frequently used phone in the office of the chairman of the State Governors, the bug from which Baldwin overheard conversations and passed on logs about them to McCord and Liddy that bug was not found at all. It seems likely, though we cannot prove it, that Baldwin either somehow obtained a key from Wells, or stole one; and just as likely that while in the DNC on June 12 he removed whatever bugs McCord had placed there. If McCord had shown him the location on a diagram, the removal of a bug would have taken Baldwin only a few seconds. Baldwin left the DNC. Several days later, the burglars came to

cratic stronghold, for

it

—

—

—

town.

On

June

15,

1972, Phil Bailley and his attorney

along with assistant United States attorneys John

Edwin C. Brown, Rudy and Vincent

Court Judge Charles R. Richey in downtown Washington, D.C., for Bailley's arraignment. What occurred during this arraignment, and how it was altered in later proceedings, was so highly unusual that it bears some close scrutiny. It started out in a normal fashion, with Rudy presenting the twenty-two-count indictment and the defendant being asked how Alto, appeared before U.S. District

the federal courthouse in

GOLDEN BOY

150

he pleaded. As expected, Bailley pleaded not guilty to all counts, and a date was set, fifteen days hence, for a trial status conference. Rudy informed Judge Richey that the government had "no objection to Mr. Bailley's release

on personal recognizance," meaning that Bailley would

not be required to post any bond and would be allowed to be free and responsible himself for showing

up

in court at

such

later

time

when

a

or any other judicial proceedings would begin. So far, so standard. Judge Richey was a presidential appointee who owed his recently acquired lifetime seat on the federal bench to Vice President Spiro Agnew. He had been assigned the Bailley case by a regular lottery

trial

We

system.

are not certain

if

he

first

arraignment, but as the reader will

learned of this case at the

recall,

the Star had on June 9

carried a front-page story about the case, characterizing

it

as a call-girl

White House connection. On June 10, the Washington Post weighed in with its own front-page story, quoting courthouse had sources as saying that "the White House had shown a special interest in the case and was exerting pressure on prosecutors not to comment on it." In any event, the June 15 arraignment proceedings before Judge Richey would take an extraordinary turn. After stating that the prosecution had "no objection to Mr. Bailley's release on personal recognizance," the prosecutor proposed two things ring with a

at

—

once

first,

to advise of an alternative to Bailley being released

without bond (or released at all), and second, to disassociate himself and the government from that same alternative. He suggested that

—

Judge Richey might wish to act on his own the legal phrase is sua sponte and specifically not at the request of the government, to order Bailley to be immediately committed to St. Elizabeth's Hospital for a sixty-day period to determine if he was mentally competent.

—

What

transpired

—the

commitment of

notoriously understaffed mental hospital so particularly

a practicing attorney to a

—was highly unusual. This

where neither the accused nor

afforded prior notice that the issue of his

is

had been commitment would be raised.

Almost embarrassed, Rudy now suggested

his counsel

that the rest of this

chambers, away from the public and the press, so that Rudy could present "certain objects and facts which we believe might justify this court" in sending Bailley to St. PJizabeth's. In effect, Rudy was asking Richey to view while making it clear that if the judge the "objects and facts" privately wished to commit Bailley for observation, he'd have to do so on his own, without the prosecution requesting the commitment. Richey, his clerk, Rudy, two U.S. marshals, a court reporter, and the rather stunned Bailley and his lawyer Brown adjourned immedi-

discussion be held in camera, that

—

is,

in the judge's

The Last Break-In

151

unused jury room, where Richey convened a it, Rudy showed the judge the "objects and facts," i.e., the same photographs he had displayed to John Dean six days earlier, and argued from these that Bailley engaged in unusual sexual practices. He buttressed the point by graphic descriptions of photographs, sexual aids, and the motion picture films seized from Bailley's apartment. Rudy told the court that "Mr. Bailley took photographs of females, a wide variety of females, in the nude. Some of these females were asked to engage in various acts such as putting whipped cream on their bodies. This was done at Air. Bailley's request for the purpose of exciting Mr. Bailley at a later time when he could look at these photographs, giving him a thrill so to speak beyond the normal act of ately to an adjoining,

hearing on whether Bailley should be committed. In

.

.

.

sexual intercourse." All of these showed,

Rudy argued, that there was "something the Rudy suggested that these sexual materials

matter with Mr. Bailley."

might cause the court to want to determine, ''sua sponte," whether Bailley "is competent to stand trial, but, more importantly, to see whether he suffered some mental disease or defect [insanity under

D.C. law]

at

the time" of the alleged crimes.

How

these sexual

depictions and paraphernalia had any bearing

on whether Bailley was competent to understand the charges against him and aid in his own defense, or was insane, were questions that were not truly addressed. In summation, Rudy added, once again, that any proposed commitment of Bailley to a mental hospital would be sua sponte, and not at the government's request.

Attorney Brown attempted to cut through the prosecutorial baloney and to argue that while Bailley might have been quite sexually inven-

do with consenting adults, and that none of Rudy's "objects or facts" were "sufficient for a showing to have him committed or to have him examined with reference to some possible defect." He was adamant that Bailley was not even faintly considering tive,

a

these activities had to

defense of insanity against the pending charges.

opposed the idea of

his client

He

vigorously

being committed.

Nonetheless, Richey concluded these secret proceedings

— where

none of the photos, sexual aids, motion pictures, or unmentioned address books made their way into the court file by ruling that Bailley would be sent to the mental hospital as soon as a bed could be found.

—

And a

then he added a further sua sponte condition on Bailley's freedom: gag order, restraining "the accused and his counsel, as well as

government counsel" from engaging

in ''-any further publicitv, pre-trial

GOLDEN BOY

152

publicity." Richey's

words suggest that he may well have known about

the press attention to this case.

Richey's ruling was a complete contradiction:

On

the one

hand

Richey would commit Bailley to a mental hospital to determine if he was competent, and on the other hand Richey would allow Bailley to remain free and to practice law until a bed became available at St. Elizabeth's. The discussion included the fact that Bailley was going to be able to continue to represent clients and to appear in court on their behalf while waiting for a bed to become available at St. Elizabeth's. Richey evidently believed that Bailley was competent to represent clients,

but not himself.

would have been enough to raise plenty of questions, as well as eyebrows. But what happened next was confusion bordering on deception in the official court docket sheets of the case. Rudy had disassociated the government from responsibility for Bailley's commitment. But the docket entry on the file was written to state falsely that Bailley was committed to St. Elizabeth's upon "the oral motion of the government." And a second document on the date of the arraignment, the actual court order committing Bailley, signed by Richey, says in effect that Richey committed Bailley because Bailley and his counsel All of this

asked to have Bailley committed!

"Upon

The

operative paragraph reads,

consideration of the motion by the Defendant for an examina-

tion of the mental competency.

..." Down on

second page, Bailley's attorney Brown signed "seen and approved." But

Brown had

it

the bottom of the

with the notation,

objected to Bailley's commit-

ment, and so had Bailley.

When Rudy

noticed the error in the docket entry that erroneously

government as having asked for Bailley's commitment, he became upset. Rudy was so upset that, before the status hearing on June 30, he asked Bailley co-counsel Allan M. Palmer to take the matter up with Judge Richey. Palmer informed Richey, on the record, that the docket sheet was in error, and that the docket sheet should have read sua sponte, meaning that Richey acted on his own. Richey made no response on the record to the pointing out of this error, and the documents were not changed nor any addendum made the docket sheet in the court file still reads that Bailley was committed upon motion of the government, and the court order still reads that Bailley asked to have himself committed. Consider: Bailley was gagged and committed to a mental hospital on the day of his arraignment. However, the record of who initiated Bailley's commitment procedure was confusing, was in conflict with the facts and with itself was false. "The only reason Bailley was sent identified the

—

—

— The Last Break-In

153

was to discredit him," John Rudy recently told us. But who would want Bailley discredited? Why would it have to be done right away? Why discredit a presumed innocent defendant in a criminal case, particularly when that defendant was a member in good standing of the bar? And why would an unrequested gag order be to St. Elizabeth's

issued in this case?

We know

John Dean had an extraordinary

that

we have

address book; and linking

Dean

also seen that there

DNC. Not

to the break-ins at the

an interest in Bailley's case, he had

nickname were

in

a girlfriend

is

interest in the

strong evidence

Dean express whose name and Clout only did

an address book along with the

alias

of her friend

Heidi Rikan, an address book that might well be introduced into

Mann

Act court case. Judge Charles Richey would not talk with us directly, but when a third party asked Judge Richey about these matters, he asserted that he had never met or spoken to John Dean at any time about any subject, Bailley or otherwise; that he knew nothing of Dean's meeting with Rudy and Smith; and that he had little memory of the proceeding in which he had ordered Bailley committed to St. Elizabeth's. While the initial case was pending, a second grand jury was convened by Rudy, in response to the Star article, to look into the possibility of a call-girl ring. Rudy told us recently that he had issued subpoenas in this case to the women listed in Bailley's address book the one he had shown Dean. Only about 10 percent of those served came to the grand jury to testify, Rudy remembers. If a woman was out of town, the prosecutors went on without her. As for those who did come in, as a way of evidence in a

identifying

them Rudy compared the women

photographs found

to those depicted in the

apartment. This unusual procedure

in Bailley's

etched the entire sequence of events deeply in Rudy's

As Maureen Dean reported

in

memory.

her book, a bit earlier in the year she

found herself precipitously dropped because John wanted to enjoy his freedom. Then had come a reconciliation, and even an engagement. Then, she writes, there was a sudden break: "I realized that John was not ready to marry

me and would

only one course for me: to quit disappear." So that's entire

summer

what she

of 1972. Dean's

not be for some time. There was

my

job, return to

Los Angeles, and

did, disappearing effectively for the

own

version of this event, reported in

Blind Ambition, puts the date of the breakup in late June of 1972.

know from Rudy

that the subpoenas

We

were served during that same

period.

Rudy's second grand jury called Bailley's parents and some of his

GOLDEN BOY

154

Where was Jeannine? she was backpacking in Europe and could not be

seven sisters, and had only one question for them:

They

all

testified that

reached.

Out of

this

superseded the

second grand jury came a second indictment that and again made no mention of any charges relating

first,

any call-girl ring. This new and slightly longer indictment was given an entirely new case number. Usually, such a second indictment that supersedes a pending indictment would retain the number of the first to

one,

order to prevent confusion and to keep a record of the

in

proceedings that had been amassed in the

first case.

Here,

just the

opposite happened: the presence of a new, and seemingly unrelated, case

the

number

first

who wanted a

assigned to the second indictment had the effect of making

Bailley case,

and

paper

its

trail, all

but disappear.

to find out about the Bailley proceedings

Any

would

reporter

find only

with the new case number 1718-72, and would not have been able

file

to discern

from

this file the relevant matters that

had occurred

in the

commitment hearing, the confusion about who had proposed the defendant's commitment to the mental asylum, and other matters. And that was good news for anyone seeking to bury Phil Bailley and his address books before they became the focus of first

case, such as the secret

intense scrutiny.

We

will return to Bailley

later in this

We come

at last to the

which most Americans in

many

and the devastating disposition of his case

book, in temporal sequence.

second and

final

refer as the

Watergate break-in, the one to

beginning of the case that resulted

people going to prison and in the resignation of Richard

Nixon. Eight

men were

involved in the execution, supervision, and

Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt, James McCord, Alfred Baldwin, Bernard Barker, Frank

observation of the break-in that night of June 16-17:

Rolando Martinez, and Virgilio Gonzalez. The men from iMiami were staying at the Watergate hotel, and Liddy agreed to meet everyone in Room 214 at 8:00 p.m., the hour at which guards at the Sturgis,

Watergate office building

made

the last regular inspection of the

premises before a midnight check. Liddy arrived

late,

having had a

when he jumped a light and was pulled over by a traffic McCord, Martinez, Gonzalez, and Sturgis were eating lobster scare

officer. tails in

the Watergate hotel restaurant. Upstairs in 214, Liddy found lights,

camera stands, and men practicing they'd have to shoot so

DNC

many

rapid-fire

photography because

photos during the time they were

at the

headquarters.

Because of the rush, the ostensible need to change the bugs, and

— The Last Break-In

155

Magruder insistence on photographing everything, many had not been completed. For instance, only earlier that evening, Baldwin had to be sent out to buy some extra wire and some batteries for a microphone-transmitter that McCord was concealing in a smoke alarm to be placed on a wall; he'd found the batteries but not the wire. McCord told him to solder the batteries together, and Baldwin managed to melt them. Liddy was told by McCord that some of the other battery-operated transceiver units were low and hadn't been recharged; Liddy couldn't believe how sloppy the bugging preparations were but then, he himself was a perfectionist. He was not, however, the surreptitious entry expert, and left the particulars of that to McCord and the other ex-CIA men. It was a Friday night, and the expectation had been that the DNC would be vacant, but lights in the Democratic headquarters stayed on and on, and Liddy decided to delay the break-in from a scheduled 10:00 p.m. the recent details

until after midnight.

Using the pretext of delivering into the office building.

a typewriter,

McCord

got himself

According to the logs maintained by the

Watergate's private security service, General Security Services, Inc.,

McCord, under an alias, signed in at 10:50 p.m. He took the elevator up to the eighth floor, his announced destination where coinciden-

—

tally

the Federal Reserve Board had recently been burglarized.

he went quickly through the stairwell

all

the

way down

Then

to the garage,

taping open doors and stuffing latches with bits of paper on the eighth

and sixth floors, the B-2 and B-3 levels, and the doors leading into the underground garage. He returned to the Watergate hotel, then went over to Baldwin's observation post, all before 1 1:30 p.m. At the office building, security guard Frank Wills arrived, logged in, and began the scheduled midnight tour of the building. Just as soon as he began, he discovered the tampered locks on B-2 and B-3, returned

and wrote down that they had been "stuff with paper." locks, making them work again. Although the stuffing could have been a maintenance man's doing, Wills decided he'd better call his superior, but couldn't reach him immediately, as Captain Bobby Jackson was making rounds in a location about twenty minutes away. Wills left a message on the GSS answering service saying there was a problem and requesting Jackson be contacted by beeper to give instructions. Jackson had some difficulty getting to a phone, and while Wills waited for him he called another supervisor, who told him to check the locks on other floors. If those were taped, too, there could be a burglary in progress; if not taped, the first ones could have been a maintenance man's leftover handiwork. As Wills was preparing to to the lobby,

He unstuck these

GOLDEN BOY

156

young man came downstairs from the DNC headquarters, and Wills went with him across the street to the Howard Johnson's to

check, a

get something to eat.

The lobby

them,

DNC was now dark, and so was the Watergate office building's

—but McCord reached Hunt and Liddy by walkie-talkie and in effect, that the coast

delayed. Liddy thought

was he who had be no problems. in

it

little

was not yet

of this; as

let several

clear.

we have

hours go by,

The

break-in was

seen, in the

just to

told

first

break-

be sure there would

Wills returned to his guard post just in time to get Captain Jackson's call,

which made the same suggestion he'd previously gotten from the

other supervisor: check the other locks before hitting the panic button.

Before making that inspection. Wills evidently decided to finish his cheeseburger.

Gordon Liddy at the command post was dependent on information from McCord, who wasn't sitting tight. Every few minutes, he seemed the Hojo's restaurant, the exterior of the to be somewhere else complex, the Baldwin listening post. McCord arrived at Room 214 at 1:05 A.M., claiming he had been across the street in the garage, checking the locks. If he had, he would have discovered that Wills had unstuffed them. It is not clear if McCord was just trying to explain away a delay to a nervous group of men, or if this was a deliberate lie. The burglars set out. Hunt and Liddv were to remain behind in 214, connected to the McCord group and to Baldwin by walkie-talkies. Five minutes

—

later,

when

found

it

the business-suited burglars reached the B-2 door, they

relocked, and couldn't get in.

From here on, accounts differ. As author Jim Hougan first revealed 1984 book Secret Agenda^ based on conversations with a number of the participants in the burglary, after finding the way blocked, McCord, Barker, and Martinez went back to confer with Hunt and Liddy while Gonzalez tried to pick the lock and Sturgis acted as his bodyguard. 1 he decision to go back in was made by Liddy, over in his

Hunt's objection. Liddy reasoned that a maintenance man could have undone the lock-stuffing, and that since no alarm had been raised, the coast was actually clear. The burglary group left the Watergate hotel so quickly that they were incredibly sloppy. 1 hough they carried false identification, on their persons they had many things that would tie them to Hunt, Liddy, the CRP, and the White Flouse a key to Room 214, $100 bills that had come from the money previously laundered by Barker for Liddy, and a pop-up address book notebook with Howard Hunt's name in it. The Cubans especially felt they had nothing to fear by dashing

—

The Last Break-In

157

were intensely loyal to Howard Hunt and knew he wouldn't do anything to harm them. Hunt had given particular

off for this burglary, for they

instructions to Martinez, but, acting as a

good cutout should, hadn't

the instructions had originated.

where To recap: Liddy thought the men were aiming for O'Brien's office. Hunt according to Martinez had given Martinez a marked floor plan showing the target in the Oliver/Wells/Governors section of the DNC as well as a key to Maxie Wells's desk. Howard Hunt has denied giving a key or a floor plan to Martinez or any of the burglars, but, as the said

—

—

reader will recall,

Hunt did confirm

that the target of the first break-in

phone Hunt said was used by Wells and Oliver. It was 1:30 a.m., June 17, 1972. Gonzalez had been successful in opening and retaping the door. The burglars were able to enter from the garage to the building, and they went in and up the stairs. After several minutes, McCord reappeared and joined them in the stairwell; then the five men walked up to the sixth floor. The burglars were trying to get into the DNC offices proper when Frank Wills discovered that the B-2 lock had been retaped. Returning

was

a

with the just arrived Federal Reserve guard Walter Hellams, who wanted to call the police. Wills wasn't ready yet. He telephoned the man who had had the shift before him to find out if there had been any taped locks on that shift; the man said no. Wills called Jackson again and informed him of the new taping, and it was only after this that Wills telephoned the District of Columbia police. At 1:52, the call went out from the dispatcher and

to the lobby. Wills discussed this

Board

office's

was picked up by a unit of plainclothesmen only a block and a half from the Watergate, who said they'd respond. One of the policeman, Carl Shoffler, had hair down to his shoulders. Meanwhile, McCord, Martinez, Barker, Sturgis, and Gonzalez had with some difficulty removed a door and gotten into the

DNC

suite

and were moving about, though not in Larry O'Brien's office. They were in the offices near Virginia Avenue and the terrace, those belonging to Oliver and Wells and the office of the press secretary on the other side of Oliver's. Martinez was setting up a camera atop Maxie Wells's desk.

After some confabulation in the lobby with Wills and Hellams, the three police officers floor,

and two guards went up

a stairwell to the

eighth

the logical place to begin looking for burglars since the Federal

Reserve Board office on that floor had been recently

DNC on the

hit.

Inside the

tramping up the stairs. McCord told him it was probably the regular two o'clock inspection round, and advised Barker to turn off his walkie-talkie to sixth floor, Martinez heard noise of their

GOLDEN BOY

158

The poHce and guards had a hard on the eighth floor, decided no one was in there, and then headed down, stopping to look at the seventh floor, and prevent the static from being heard.

time getting into the

FRB

then at the sixth.

Now

Baldwin in the Hojo's could see the interlopers. Over the walkie-talkie he rather casually asked Liddy in Room 214, "Hey, any of our guys wearin' hippie clothes?" "Negative," Liddy replied. "All our people are in business suits. Why?" Baldwin told him they had "trouble": men with guns on the sixth floor. Inside the DNC, the burglars deduced that the jig was up. McCord grabbed some papers from the press secretary's desk application blanks for press credentials at the convention by campus newspapers, a memo on where to get low-cost dormitory rooms in Miami, and a memo on allowable travel expenses. Then the burglars all hid behind desks. "They got us," Barker whispered over the walkie-talkie. Rolando Martinez thought about what was happening and decided that he and his fellow Miamians had been betrayed by James McCord. Guns drawn, the police and guards entered the DNC offices, discovered the men hiding behind the desks, and ordered them to stand up and "assume the position" hands against a wall, legs spread for a pat-down. The burglars complied readily, almost with nonchalance, and offered no resistance. They looked so odd, in business suits and wearing rubber gloves, that the police assumed they were dealing with professionals, probably men from organized crime who might well be armed. No weapons were found. Somebody called for backup units, and from nearby streets squad cars with lights flashing began heading

—

—

—

for the building.

Realizing that this was not a crime involving street criminals,

and the two other plainclothesmen proceeded with care, so as to produce from their searches of the burglars the sort of solid, properly taken evidence that would stand up in court. Shoffler recalls. Shoffler

We

put them

and [fellow

all

against the wall and

officer

I

was going

be the

listing officer

John] Barrett was going to be the searching

That being the case

\vc

only patted them for weapons and then

on the wall so that Barrett could go one by one to

While under

to

arrest

seize items

officer.

left

with his hands against the wall, Martinez took

calculated and highly dangerous risk, one that could have cost life.

He

them

from them.

reached inside his coat pocket for something.

When

him

a

his

Shoffler

saw Martinez do this, he immediately slammed and wrestled the Cuban until he was neutralized. "I almost had to break his arm off," Shoffler

The Last Break-In

159

remembers, Shoffler searched him thoroughly to see what Martinez had been trying so desperately to get rid of: It was a small key, taped to the back of a notebook. Martinez has acknowledged to us that he was trying to get rid of the key that he says was given to him by Howard Hunt, and that this action by Shoffler prevented him from doing so. Shoffler asked Martinez what the key was for, but got no answer. He decided not to remove it from the notebook and try it on any of the desks, realizing that to do so might compromise the evidence. The burglars had lots of loose keys, mostly blanks, and lock-picking equipment. Of more immediate concern was the smoke alarm device the police thought it might be a bomb. The function of Martinez's key would not become apparent until ten days later, when the FBI by trial and error discovered that it fit the desk of Maxie Wells. When interviewed about this by the FBI, both Wells and Barbara Kennedy to whom Wells had given the spare key were able to produce their keys. But, according to the to her desk available FBI reports, neither woman was asked the obvious follow-up questions: Why would a Watergate burglar have a key to Wells's desk in his possession, and what items of possible interest to a Watergate burglar were maintained in Wells's locked desk drawer? Although another DNC employee told us that Wells was interviewed by the FBI "four or five times," no reports of additional Wells/Martinez key interviews are to be found in the official Watergate files at the National Archives or at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. And curiously, two years later, when testifying about the break-in before the Senate Watergate committee. Wells would avoid disclosing her knowledge that Martinez had in his possession a key to her desk. Howard S. Liebengood, assistant counsel to the minority staff of the committee, confirmed to us that the information Maxie Wells kept to

—

—

—

herself, if

known

to the minority staff, could have significantly altered

the focus of the investigation.

In the Watergate hotel.

Hunt knew

it

was

all

over,

and told Liddy

they'd have to get out quickly, because Barker had the key to the hotel

room. Soon, the cops would come there.

They

exited so rapidly that

they didn't have time to clean out the second room, and so

left

behind

matched sequentially with those in the burglars' pockets, a Barker address book that also contained Hunt's White House telephone number, and a check made out by Hunt to a local country club. Liddy got in his jeep and prepared to go home, as Hunt said he'd take care of Baldwin and the observation post. Hunt went into the Hojo's and found Baldwin calmly looking over the

electronic

equipment, $100

bills

that

GOLDENBOY

160

scene across the avenue, observing the squad cars with Hghts, and

McCord and

the other burglars being led out of the building and into a paddy wagon. Hunt wanted Baldwin out of town, but Baldwin com-

plained that he had a

lot

then told him to load

it

of stuff to load.

up

By

his

own

account.

Hunt

McCord's van and get away. Baldwin took everything out of the room, but then drove the van and the electronic equipment, including the walkie-talkies that matched the one taken from Barker in the DNC, to McCord's home in a Maryland in

Then he got out of town, heading for Connecticut. Gordon Liddy reached his own home about three in the morning,

suburb.

and the evidence linking this burglary to when he got to the office the next morning. He knew that McCord's fingerprints were on file, since McCord had been in government service, which meant he would be "made" within twenty-four hours and his employment easily traced to the CRP. That, of course, would place Liddy himself in jeopardy, even if all the burglars kept their mouths shut. His wife stirred in bed and asked him if anything was wrong. "There was trouble. Some people got caught. I'll probably be going to jail," he told her, then climbed into bed and tried to get some sleep. thinking about

all

the

files

higher-ups that he'd have to destroy

10

LOS ANGELES AND

MANILA: THE COVER-UP BEGINS

THE story of the arrests at the Watergate came too late for most of the newspapers in the United States to print editions, so

pers

many Americans

on June

18,

inside the headquarters of the sixth floor of the

Nixon chose

in their

Saturday

learned from their Sunday newspa-

first

1972, that five

it

men had been

arrested at gunpoint

Democratic National Committee on the

Watergate office building in Washington. Richard

in his

autobiography to chronicle his

first

reaction as a

response to the front-page story in that Sunday's Miami Herald, senti-

ments that reflected the views of most

who

read similar stories that

day:

It

sounded preposterous: Cubans

dismissed

it

as

some

in surgical gloves

sort of prank.

.

.

.

The whole

bugging the thing

made

DNC! so

I

little

Why? I wondered. Why then? Why in such a blundering way? And why, of all places, the Democratic National Committee? Anyone who knew anything about politics would know that a national committee sense.

headquarters was a useless place to go for inside information on a

161

GOLDEN BOY

162

presidential campaign. that

it

almost looked

The whole

like

thing was so senseless and bungled

some kind of a

setup.

Insiders to the events reacted with considerably

more

intensity.

To

Jeb Magruder, deputy director of the reelection committee, news of the arrests brought an attack of panic. On June 17, the morning of the break-in, xVIagruder was in Los Angeles traveling with John Mitchell,

Fred LaRue, and Robert C. Mardian, political coordinator of the

CRR

Political meetings were scheduled for that day, and a Bel Air party with entertainment industry celebrities for the coming evening. Magruder, several other campaign officials, and their wives were having

breakfast in the Polo

paged and

Lounge of the Beverly

a telephone

Gordon Liddy was on at 7:00

brought to

Hills Hotel

his table.

the line. Liddy had

It

when Jeb was

was 8:00 a.m., and

first tried

to reach

Magruder

a.m. Washington, D.C., time, only to learn that Magruder was

where it was 4:00 a.m., and decided that it was too early to call. Liddy spent the intervening hours at CRP, shredding documents associated with the break-in and other campaign activities, and when CRP Deputy Press Director Powell A. Moore arrived Liddy told him of xMcCord's arrest. Moore informed Liddy that Mitchell was to hold a news conference in California that afternoon, and would undoubtedly be asked about the break-in. Liddy headed to the Situation Room at the White House to call Magruder on an absolutely secure phone. He still had a pass, thanks to John Dean's intervention with the in California,

Secret Service,

who had

tried to revoke

it.

From the White House, Liddy reached Magruder at the Polo Lounge, but wouldn't tell him the news. He insisted that Magruder rush to the nearest military base and call him back from a similarly secure phone. xVlagruder protested and went instead to a nearby pay phone, whence he called the White House. Liddy told him of the botched break-in and that McCord and the burglars had been caught. Of course they had all given aliases, but these would soon be seen

would become evident that McCord, the security chief of the president's reelection committee, had been apprehended in the act of trying to bug the opposition's headquarters. "What the hell was McCord doing inside the Watergate?" the apoplectic Magruder shouted into the pay phone. "You were supposed to keep this operation removed from us. Have you lost your mind?" Liddy accepted full responsibility for having used McCord inside, but tried to keep Magruder focused on what he saw as the more pressing

through bv the police, and

it

problem, relaying the information to Mitchell so prepared for the press conference.

a

statement could be

Los Angeles and Manila: The Cover-up Begins

163

Magruder remembered the phone calls differently. In Jeb's version, it was not Liddy but himself who raised the urgency of talking to Mitchell. "I've got to talk to Mitchell. Stay by the phone. We'll get back to you," he quoted himself as saying in his memoir, An American Life. For most people, including the Senate committee, the investigating reporters, the courts, and the American public, Magruder's transfer of information to Mitchell triggered the Watergate cover-up, an action in

which Magruder himself was understood Recently, however,

when we

to

be only

a

minor

player.

confronted him with evidence to the

j

I

B '

r

p

Magruder began to change his story and to agree that there was far more to what happened that Saturday morning than he had ever previously revealed. This was a painful realization for him, and to understand it we must point out that Magruder has changed considerably in the years since Watergate. When we interviewed him, he had become the Presbyterian Reverend Jeb Magruder, assistant pastor of the First Community Church of Columbus, Ohio, and the head of that city's ethics commission, and he recognized that what he was doing, in coming to these new realizations, was admitting that his testimony to the Senate and to the Watergate juries had been untrue. Why did Magruder originally finger xMitchell? As is now apparent, much of what Magruder said about the events of Watergate and specifically about John Mitchell was untrue. But in judging iVlagruder it is necessary to understand the situation in which he found himself in 1973. Dean's story of Watergate had already become the federal

contrary,

—

—

prosecutors' and the Senate Watergate committee's accepted version, the

benchmark

sured. Everyone

described

him

which anyone

against

we

talked to

else's

version was being mea-

who knew Magruder from the period who could not cope

person and someone

as not a strong

with heavy pressure. Magruder described to us his predicament: interest

it

struck

me was

not about

Dean

at all. It

"The

Their main was about Mitchell."

prosecutors were tough and they played real hardball.

.

.

.

He

said they made it plain to him that "I better cooperate." Magruder now acknowledges that one of his first actions after being informed of the break-in was to get hold of John Dean. That call to Dean was the real trigger of the Watergate cover-up. That call, and the

events

it

started rolling, have

following pages

we

will

been concealed for many years; all into proper perspective.

in the

put them

In the account that follows, the reader will learn

how Magruder

and Dean wildly altered time sequences, transposed actions from one person to another, and level

made

allegations that placed the cover-up at the

of Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and, eventually, Nixon.

Magruder's old version of events in the hours following the phone

GOLDEN BOY

164

from Liddy comes from An American Life, which Magruder initially told us was his most accurate version of events, compiled from contemporaneous notes. Despite the urgent need to inform Mitchell, Magruder returned to his breakfast and calmly finished eating, in order not call

to alarm the others.

Then he

waited almost ninety minutes, until close

anyone else in Los Angeles about the break-in and the arrests. "Breakfast seemed to drag on forever," Magruder wrote in his book, "but when we finally left the Polo Lounge I took Fred LaRue aside and said I had to talk to him in private." To find privacy, they moved upstairs to the third floor, where the campaign entourage was staying, and Mitchell's security director, Stephen B. King, let them into his own room, across the hall from Mitchell's. King's log showed this to be at 9:55 a.m. Mitchell was then in conversation in his suite with Mardian and Thomas Reed, who would later become Secretary of the Air Force. Mitchell was due to leave the hotel at 10:30 and drive with Governor Ronald Reagan to an 1:00 a.m. political meeting across town, so Magruder and LaRue didn't have much time. "Quickly, I told LaRue the facts McCord and the Cubans had been arrested in Larry O'Brien's office, and Hunt and Liddy might be next," Magruder wrote. LaRue decided that he would go across the hall alone and tell Mitchell, while Magruder waited in King's room. LaRue interrupted the Reed meeting, pulled Mitchell into an adjoining part of the suite, and gave him the bad news. As LaRue later testified to the Senate committee, Mitchell was "very surprised" and exclaimed, "That is incredible." In Magruder's writing and testimony, after being told of the crisis by LaRue, Mitchell called across the hall for Magruder to come in; then Mitchell, Mardian, LaRue, and Magruder hatched the cover-up. Mitchell, Magruder said, in that rump meeting issued the instruction that began the cover-up, specifically, the attempt to get McCord out of jail before his true identity was discovered. " if we could just get [McCord] out of jail before they find out who he is,' " Magruder reported "someone" as suggesting in this meeting, " 'then maybe he .' One of us suggested that Mitchell call Dick could just disappear. Kleindienst, his successor as Attorney General, and see if he could to 10:00 A.M., to

tell

1

—

.

help us get

McCord

.

out of

jail."

In Magruder's version, Mitchell then

would be better if Mardian made that call; it was known to them all that Mardian and Kleindienst were friends. Mardian was dispatched to call Kleindienst, who turned out to be then on the golf course. So Mardian next called Liddy and gave him the message to pass to Kleindienst. Then they all went down and joined the Reagan motorcade and were out of telephone touch with anyone for a few hours. On that trip, according to Magruder, securitv man Steve King responded that

it

Los Angeles and Manila: The Cover-up Begins

165

why

he was brooding, and if he needed help, and Magruder problem back in Washington." Before proceeding further with the events of that morning, we must point out that Magruder's version of what happened when he first informed Mitchell through LaRue was untrue. "Did Mr. Mitchell give asked him

told

him

it

was

"just a little p.r.

any instructions to anybody cratic counsel to the

Demo-

after getting that information?"

Watergate committee

Sam Dash

asked Fred

LaRue

"Not at that time," LaRue responded. According to LaRue, Mardian, King, and Mitchell, after learning the news from LaRue, Mitchell went back into his meeting, finished it, and then went downstairs to meet Reagan. Neither LaRue, Mardian, nor Mitchell, all three have said, issued any instruction that morning to talk to Kleindienst, and never attempted in any way to spring McCord from jail. Furthermore, Mardian, the supposed conveyor of the message to Liddy, hardly knew Liddy, and testified he did not

in 1973.

make

a call to

The

Liddy.

fourth witness, Steve King, a former FBI agent

who

later

became chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party and ran for a U.S. Senate seat in the 1988 Republican primary, remembers the motorcade incident distinctly, because he didn't go on in the cars at all, but, rather, was asked by Mitchell to stay in the hotel and take care of Martha. King told us that xMagruder's account of a conversation between them in the car is "absolutelv wrong [because] I never made that trip."

But Magruder's previous version has been the accepted one for eighteen years, and its major consequence was to place the launching of the cover-up on John Mitchell's shoulders.

Gordon Liddy's version of what happened in the Watergate affair was not made public until 1980, when he published his memoir. Will. In that book, Liddy makes deliberate note of the fact that more than seven years had elapsed since the events of the burglary, and that the statute

of limitations on the crimes associated with of the reasons

why

it

had run out;

it

was one

he had waited until then to publish. For the eight

years between the burglary and the publication of his book,

maintained silence. to

limit

the

He did

damage

philosophy that Liddy

to

so,

Nixon and

his

men, and

to the

political

believed he shared with the president. But his

silence allowed other people's versions of events to all

Liddy

he said, in order to protect the president,

go unchallenged for

those intervening years.

Liddy wrote that the crucial phone call that morning came to him from Jeb Magruder, at around noon in Washing-

not from Mardian, but

GOLDENBOY

166

—

Los Angeles that is, well before Magruder reports Mitchell of the break-in. Liddy had already he had informed that talked with xMagruder that morning and when Magruder called him this time, "I was set for another bout of sniveling," Liddy wrote, "but ton, or 9:00 A.M. in

never came: instead he had a message from Mitchell. I was to find Dick Kleindienst, the Attorney General, and ask him to get McCord out of jail immediately." The precise words he was to convey were, "Tell him 'John sent you,' and it's a 'personal request from John.' He'll understand." Liddy thought this was a terrible idea, but, ever the good soldier, he started to carry it out. "I hung up and asked Powell Moore where I'd be likely to find Dick Kleindienst at noon on Saturday." Burning Tree golf course, Moore said, and they discussed the idea for it

a while.

We

spoke recently with Moore,

that the call to

who

confirmed his clear impression

Liddy came from Magruder and

said he

remembers the

events distinctly, because he was standing beside Liddy and because he, too, thought that asking Kleindienst to spring

dumbest with a

idea

CRP

I

ever heard of."

They

employee being arrested

"to drag the attorney general into

it is

McCord was

"the

already had enough problems

DNC

in the

headquarters, and

stupid." Liddy insisted that he

said he'd go with him to Burning Tree, was concerned about Kleindienst." They found the attorney general at lunch at the golf course at about 12:30 P.M., and convinced him to move into the locker room, where they couldn't be overheard. Kleindienst already knew of the break-in, having learned about it from Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen earlier in the morning, but Kleindienst had no details. Liddy told him dir.ectly that the burglary had been an operation of the intelligence arm of the CRP, and that he himself had been in charge. Liddy then said he had a message from Mitchell to deliver, and Kleindienst interrupted to ask if he'd heard it from Mitchell directly. Liddy told him it had come through Magruder, and proceeded to ask him to spring McCord as a "personal request from John." Kleindienst was stunned. His reaction, he later told the Watergate The relationship I had committee, was "instantaneous and abrupt. with Mr. Mitchell was such that I do not believe that he would have sent a person like Gordon Liddy to come out and talk to me about anything. He knew where he could find me twenty-four hours a day." Kleindienst told Liddy that he could not and would not do what Liddy asked. The testimonies, memories, and writings of Liddy, Kleindienst, and Moore all agree on this version of events, and so does the timing. Magruder remains absolutely certain that he didn't convey his message

must follow orders, and Moore "because, frankly,

I

.

.

.

Los Angeles and Manila: The Cover-up Begins

167

about McCord's arrest to Mitchell (through LaRue) until ten

in the

morning; Steve King's log puts the time of Magruder's arrival in the room across the hall at precisely 9:55 a.m. If that was the case and all the evidence substantiates it then the conversation in the locker room

—

at

—

the Burning Tree golf club could not have legitimately invoked

name. Because when Liddy, Moore, and Kleindienst were in the locker room, it was only 9:30 a.m. back in Los Angeles, and Mitchell had not even talked to LaRue. The Watergate committee and the courts were told of these discrepancies; in fact, Powell Moore was closely questioned about them, and never wavered in his position on the timing of the call and the substance of his discussions with Liddy and the ways in which Kleindienst acted. And there was other evidence that the committee also ignored the testimonies of Mardian, LaRue, and Kleindienst, for instance because the committee's focus was on Magruder's roping in of Mitchell and Mitchell's supposed culpability for the beginning of the cover-up. Mardian, for instance, told the committee that if Mitchell had instructed him to get a message to Kleindienst, he "would have instructed me to call Kleindienst myself. I didn't need an intermediary for him. Mr. Kleindienst is a close friend of mine." So the Watergate committee didn't look to poke holes in Magruder's testimony implicating Mitchell, and neither did the Watergate Special Prosecutor's office, which later indicted Mitchell, Mardian, and five other Nixon aides on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and other offenses; one of the first "overt acts" with which they were charged was Mitchell's supposed order to Liddy to ask Kleindienst to Mitchell's

—

get

McCord

out of

jail.

As

—

readers shall discover as these chapters

all of the men charged in that indictment had not committed the specific acts with which they were charged, and on which they were later convicted. (Mardian's conviction was reversed on appeal.) The evidence is overwhelming that Magruder made the call to Liddy and told him to importune Kleindienst without consulting Mitchell or anyone else in the CRP hierarchy, and that he did so even before Mitchell learned that burglars had been caught in the DNC. We confronted Magruder with the evidence, especially with the conflicting time sequences, and Magruder now acknowledges that he, not Mardian, must have called Liddy and said "something to the effect, 'We've got to figure out how to get this thing done.' ... I must have said something to [Liddy] about that we ought to try to talk to Kleindienst." Later in the interview, Magruder tried to backpedal, emphasizing repeatedly that he could not himself have been responsible for starting

progress, nearly actually

— GOLDEN BOY

168

the cover-up, but then again conceded, "I could have said something

Hke you ought to try to

Magruder admitted,

talk to Kleindienst."

"I didn't see

Then,

in a later interview,

Mitchell until later." So, Mitchell

didn't send you, didn't send Mardian, didn't send

anybody? we asked.

"Right," said Magruder.

Did Magruder Kleindienst?

Magruder

We

really act

on

his

own

Liddy

in directing

have talked to more than a dozen people

at that time,

and

all

describe

man who was

cautious, often indecisive

him

in that

to

go to

who knew

time frame as a

not inclined to take any actions

unless those were endorsed by a superior; in Washington parlance,

Magruder was not

a

Magruder agrees in part to this "The fact is that the way I worked you, anybody who knew me I would never

self-starter.

characterization of his old

self:

—

and anybody would tell start a cover-up on my own." In fact,

he started

because of

it

a

conversation that Saturday

morning with John Dean.

On

the morning of June 17,

White House counsel John Dean was in officials from the U.S. Bureau of

Manila, where he had traveled with

Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, an agency of the Justice Department.

Dean knew some invited him as the tion address at the

of the

BNDD

officials personally,

and they had

representative of the president to present a gradua-

BNDD

training school in Manila. Even Philippine

president Ferdinand Marcos would be there to hear him.

Dean had

received clearance for a four-day trip, from June 14 to June 18. In evaluating the following events,

it is

important to remember that

during the month of June, Manila is twelve hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time, and fifteen hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Time. For

were made at 2:30 a.m. on June 17, Washington time, but 2:30 p.m. Manila time, the same day. And the Liddy-Magruder calls, made between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. Los Angeles time on June 17, were made between eleven o'clock in the evening and midnight Manila time, on the seventeenth. One of the men of the BNDD on the trip was Assistant Director Perry Rivkind, a friend of Dean's. On the afternoon of June 17, Rivkind and Dean were sitting on a balcony of the Manila Hilton Hotel, overlooking the bay. The ceremony was over and they could relax before they flew out of Manila and headed for home the next morning. "There was this most violet-looking dark cloud coming on towards the Hilton," Rivkind recalled recently for us, and Dean said to him, "Gee, you ought to take a picture of that." He did. A month later. Dean called him and asked about the picture, because Dean thought it had instance, the arrests of the burglars

Los Angeles and Manila: The Cover-up Begins

169

been taken almost precisely when the Watergate burglars had been arrested. Rivkind sent him a copy of the photograph. Later, in the evening, the friends went to dinner and Rivkind ate some local food while Dean stuck to less exotic fare. Rivkind can't pinpoint the time, but remembers

it

as

being well after dinner when,

according to a short conversation he had with

Dean

received a call from

to "break off the trip"

Who made

"somebody

and return

in the

Dean about

White House"

that time. telling

him

to the capital.

that call to Dean.^ After being told of Rivkind's story,

and being reminded of dates, time zones, and the like, Jeb Magruder told us he had deduced that it must have been he who made the call. Magruder took us through the chain of logic that moved him to arrive at this conclusion. There were three people Magruder said he would have had to call when he first received the news about the capture of the burglars from Liddy. Bob Haldeman was in Florida, but Magruder didn't want to talk to the fearsome Haldeman without having something good to tell him and there was no good news so he didn't call Haldeman. Or he would have called Haldeman's assistant, Gordon Strachan. Similarly, Magruder remembers ducking Strachan's calls to him all day, for the same reason: fear of Haldeman's wrath. Haldeman and Strachan, in testimony, said that Magruder had not spoken to them on the morning of the seventeenth; Strachan remembered particularly that he kept trying to get Magruder all during that day, and was only able to reach him on Sunday the eighteenth. There was a third logical candidate for Magruder to call, and that was John Dean. "He was somebody I would have wanted to call,"

—

—

Magruder allowed. But, we asked, what about Rivkind's sense that the had come from the White House? "It would have been very easy for me," Magruder pointed out, "to call the White House, get the signal board, and say 'I want to get hold of John Dean.' They could have patched me in to Manila," and he wouldn't even have known where Dean was. That sort of thing happened all the time. Further, Magruder conceded that this call must have happened some time between 8:20 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. California time, or between 11:20 p.m. and midnight in Manila. In that call, Magruder agrees, he and Dean came up with the idea of sending Liddy to talk to Kleindienst, and of

call

using Mitchell's

We you

name

to spur Kleindienst to action.

pressed further on this point. "If

at eight-forty

have been Mitchell

it's

John Dean

who

a.m. to get Liddy to find Kleindienst,

who

said that,"

we

telling

it

could not

I

didn't see

suggested.

"No," Magruder answered, "because Mitchell until later."

is

I

didn't see him,

GOLDEN BOY

170

It

was then that we asked, "Mitchell didn't send you, he didn't send

Mardian, he didn't send anybody?" "Right," Magruder said. "Now, we are talking about the incident that ended up with Liddy out at Burning Tree that's Dean?" we asked. "Yes," Magruder agreed, "I'm sure that's Dean." Magruder's admission is startling, because it identifies John Dean

—

as the originator of the cover-up

and controverts Dean's stance that he

did not even hear of the break-in until he returned to the United States.

Dean's standard story

—has been

instance

—given

to the Watergate committee,

for

when he landed

that he learned of the break-in

in

San Francisco on the morning of June 18. His hope had been to spend an additional day of relaxation in San Francisco before coming back to Washington, but that hope ended when he called his associate Fred Fielding to check in and Fielding told him of the burglary and urged him to return to Washington. "I recall that at first I resisted," Dean testified, "but Mr. Fielding, who was not explicit at that time, told me I should come back so that he could fill me in." In later years.

some

details

Dean embellished

and even contradicting

this story, in Blind

his earlier stance.

Ambition adding

Thus Chapter Four

of that book begins,

Manila, Philippines, June Washington.

The

1972 (Monday).

19,

been rushed. Pigeon, octopus and pine restaurant challenged I

my

turtle delicacies

digestion

crossed the international date line,

San Francisco on Sunday, June

and the exotic cuisine was Fielding to

tell

I

was heading back

to

four-day round trip, including a day in Tokyo, had

him

I

18,

still

it

on the

from

flight.

would be

and decided to

a native Philip-

Tomorrow, when

yesterday.

I

arrived in

stay over.

I

was

sending distress signals.

would not be

in the office

I

tired,

called Fred

Monday morning

as

planned.

One

can only relish the brashness of the

words with

a magician's flair for

lie,

the

way Dean used

concealment and misdirection, even

appropriating the dinner eaten by Perry Rivkind to give

Dean himself

reason for his emotional upset. In Dean's story, he flew back to

Washington via San Francisco on schedule, called Fielding, and it was onlv when he got to his townhouse and found Fielding waiting for him that he learned the details of the break-in. Dean's account then goes on to tell of the jokes he made in the office in Washington about having two Mondays in a week, something that no one should have to endure. Fhe idea of two Mondays was sand in the eyes of anyone trying to

|

Los Angeles and Manila: The Cover-up Begins

171

and it worked for many years. But Dean didn't have two Mondays, he had two Sundays. We have recently obtained a document from the Republic of the Philippines Bureau of Immigration that shows quite clearly that John Dean departed the country on Sunday, June 18, 1972, at 8:15 a.m. on Philippine Airlines flight 428 bound for Tokyo. That is, on the first plane he could get after he had received the phone call near midnight on June 17 from Jeb Magruder. Why would Dean lie about when he had left Manila? Why fabricate the business about two Mondays? What difference did it make when follow his

Dean

trail,

learned of the break-in?

It

made

all

the difference in the world,

because Dean desperately wanted to convince everyone that he had had

nothing to do with the beginning of the cover-up, which started in

Magruder's phone If

call to

him

in

Manila on the night of the seventeenth.

he started admitting that Magruder had called him quite so early in

the game,

all

sorts of inquiries

would be

stirred alive,

and he would not

be able to keep the questioners from probing his story closely, and

coming upon such people as Perry Rivkind and his assistant Bob Stutman, whose testimony could have impugned Dean. We kept following Dean's trail on the way to Washington, and discovered even more evidence to contradict his story. When he landed in Tokyo that Sunday afternoon, he had a one-hour layover before boarding Pan American flight 846, which left Japan at 2:15 p.m. This flight crossed the international dateline in the Pacific Ocean and landed in San Francisco on Dean's second Sunday at 7:25 in the morning. Bob Stutman, another BNDD official who was Rivkind's assistant, traveled with him and Stutman provided information that helped confirm that Dean's story of that flight was inaccurate. Stutman recalled that he and Dean had been planning since Manila to spend an extra day in San Francisco, and had hotel reservations and plans for dinner. Upon landing in San Francisco, they went directly to Pan Am's Yankee Clipper lounge, where Dean began making phone calls. It was early Sunday morning, and the logical move would have been to go to the hotel and check in, but, Stutman says. Dean was insistent on using the phone. Stutman waited for Dean in the lounge. Dean, the consummate actor, returned and told Stutman, "I've got to go back. I apologize. Why don't you stay here?" Stutman remembers

—

Dean's explanation for the

summons

to Washington:

caught breaking into Democratic headquarters and

Dean

said

flight to

it's

he needed to make more calls, so Stutman

Baltimore.

What Stutman

Dean

"Some guys

got

causing a problem."

left

to get a connecting

awaited a flight back to Washington.

did not

know

as

he

left

Dean was who

else

Dean

—

GOLDEN BOY

172

might be calling in the interim before he could get aboard a flight to Washington. Scrambling for a lifeline, Dean reached out for his only remaining and uncompromised intelligence asset: Tony Ulasewicz. In an interview, Ulasewicz told us that he was called on the eighteenth and told to fly to Washington immediately; he agreed that it was a "Dean request." In his autobiography, published after the interview was conducted, Ulasewicz added that it was Caulfield who called him on behalf of Dean. Caulfield denied talking to Dean or Ulasewicz on June 18; in any event, Ulasewicz hopped a plane and took up residence in the capital.

As we have seen

John Dean's story changed dependit. He told one set of lies to and another in his book, but when he was Watergate committee, the still employed in the White House and was reporting directly to Nixon, Dean very often came the closest to telling the whole truth of the in earlier chapters,

ing on the circumstances in which he told

Watergate

always excepting his

affair,

own

integral part in

it.

He

had to be honest and accurate at least, as honest as he could ever be on these matters. Dean did not know at the time he spoke with Nixon that he was being taped, and so the tape recordings of the Nixon-Dean conversations provide some of the best and most candid evidence available on Dean's actions. To conclude this section on how the cover-up began, here is the relevant

seemed

to feel that in briefing the president, he

—

section of the

Dean

said

D: The when I

Nixon-Dean conversation of March 21, 1973. he wanted to tell the president how everything

next point in time that got the

word

I

started.

became aware of anything was on June 7th had been this break in at the DNC and 1

that there

somebody from our Committee had been caught in the DNC. And I said, "Oh, (expletive deleted)," you know, eventually putting the pieces together P:

You knew

D:

I

who

knew who

1 here

it

was:

it

it

was.

was. So

more or

I

called

less,

Liddy on Monday morning.

.

.

.

the true sequence of his learning about

the break-in, which he placed on June 17. In later versions, to the

Senate and in his book, he said that the date was June 18. And when the tapes were first released, everyone was concerned with the presi-

and so missed the significance of the date on which had first learned about the break-in and that he knew Ciordon Liddv was involved.

I

dent's actions,

Dean

told the president that he

|

'

u

A WALK IN THE PARK

PRESIDENT

when he though he had brought staff members down with him, he had them lodged some distance away so he could have his privacy but still summon them when he needed them. Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman recalled in his autobiography the mood of the staff upon learning the news for the first time on Saturday, June 17. Haldeman was on the terrace of his hotel villa with assistant Larry Higby when a bathing-suited Ron Ziegler approached, waving a wire service sheet with the information that five men had been caught breaking into the DNC with electronic equipment. "The news item was jarring, almost comical to me. Watergate historians have always supposed that the heavens fell when those in the President's party in Florida learned the break-in had been discovered. Quite the reverse is true. My immediate reaction was to smile. Wiretap the Democratic National Committee? For what? The idea was ludicrous." It took Haldeman until the next morning to get hold of Magruder and learn from a "nervous" Jeb that the break-in had been "sponsored" but not ordered by the CRP, and that the burglars had been operating Richard Nixon was on vacation in Florida

learned about the break-in.

As

usual,

173

— 174

GOLDENBOY

their own and "just got carried away." Magruder mentioned the name of the runaway operative, James McCord, and said he worked for Gordon Liddy. Haldeman had no idea who McCord was, and had

on

heard of Liddy but had never met him.

It all seemed very remote from White House, and Haldeman was relieved. Magruder read him a press release that said McCord had been a freelance operator and that the CRP had "no involvement" in the breakin. Since Haldeman understood this to be technically true, "it sounded okay to me," and he told Magruder that and hurriedly hung up. Magruder's account differs in a most important respect; he writes that when he spoke to Haldeman, it was "with the assumption that he knew about the break-in plan, and nothing [Haldeman] said indicated he did not." This assumption was based on the chain of command xMagruder knew that Dean was supposed to report to the president through Haldeman, and assumed that Dean had told Haldeman about his activities and was acting with Haldeman's knowledge and authority. When Haldeman received the news from Magruder, he reached out for John Ehrlichman. Haldeman's old college buddy had already been at work on the matter. Ehrlichman had received a call from a Secret Service agent who had a copy of a police report saying that when one of the burglars had been arrested he had in his possession a check signed by Howard Hunt and Hunt's White House phone number. Ehrlichman knew Hunt to be Chuck Colson's man, and had immediately seen the danger to Nixon from his connection. So, as Ehrlichman recounts in his memoir, he had done the logical thing, phoned Colson and asked whatever had become of "that fellow Howard Hunt." Colson wanted to know the reason for the question, and Ehrlichman gave him the bad news. Colson assured Ehrlichman that Hunt's White House employment had been "terminated" some time ago, and he was now working for the Bennett firm. "Why does Hunt have a White House phone?" Ehrlichman asked, and Colson said he didn't know. Ehrlichman couldn't immediately reach Haldeman in Florida, so he left an extended message with Ron Ziegler about his conversations with the Secret Service agent and Colson. He reiterated those once more on Sunday, when he and Haldeman finally connected. Both men commiserated that if Colson was involved even if, as Colson claimed, Hunt was long gone from the White House they were in for a lot of problems, Haldeman decided to talk directly to Colson, and received the same denial Colson had given to Ehrlichman: He had last used Hunt two months earlier, on the TEF matter, and even then Hunt had

the

—

been off the payroll.

—

A Walk in the Park

1 75

"You gotta believe me, Bob," Haldeman quoted the upset Colson as saying. "It wasn't me. Tell the President that. I know he'll be worried." Colson told Haldeman that he understood all of the serious implications, that it could mean his political life, and that "they'll try to tie me into an absolutely idiotic break-in,

Haldeman next

Nixon,

and

who

it's

not right."

reassured

him

that

it

wasn't Colson but was "some crazies over at CRP," and

it

called

matter because "the American people will see political prank. Hell,

they can't take

it

for

a break-in at the

what

probably wouldn't it

was: a

DNC seriously.''

[Italics in original]

Haldeman would learn that Nixon, too, had frantically phoned Colson, in what Colson later described as a towering rage. Nixon had gone so far during that conversation as to throw an ashtray around the room, but he had shown only a "calm, cool, even amused" face to Bob Haldeman. On Monday morning, the Washington Post had a front-page story linking James McCord to the CRP, and, at about the same time. Post police reporter Eugene Bachinski was getting from his police sources the same information previously conveyed by the Secret Service to Ehrlichman, that Hunt was connected to the burglars. This, then, was the situation on Monday morning, June 19, 1972, when John Dean arrived at his White House office, grumbling that no one should have two Mondays in a week. He knew that McCord had been arrested, and could figure out that Howard Hunt and Gordon Years later,

Liddy would shortly be connected to the break-in, and that these

men

could lay the break-in at his doorstep. In his later testimony and book, John

Dean took

care to construct a

few days of Watergate whose main point was that he first learned in detail of the burglary on that Monday morning; for instance, he wrote that it was on this Monday (rather than two days earlier) that he had his first conversation with Magruder. In Dean's version, when Jeb announced that the burglars had been arrested and said, "We've got a real problem, John," Dean wrote that he thought, "What do you mean, we've got a problem, narrative of his activities over these first

Jeb?

.

.

.

You've got a

problem, baby!"

Then, according to Dean, Ehrlichman called and Dean told him that Magruder had telephoned to say the whole thing was "Liddy's fault." In Dean's version, Ehrlichman was uncharacteristically mildmannered when he received this bombshell, and merely asked Dean to obtain more information. This supposed conversation with Ehrlichman prior to Dean's meeting later that morning with Liddy, one of the

GOLDEN BOY

176

centerpieces of Dean's narrative, effectively implicated Ehrlichman in

up the burglary. But Ehrlichman says he did not talk to Dean at all that day until noon, which was after Dean's meeting with Liddy. To go the next step forward, we must take a step backward. As we have demonstrated, Magruder first talked to Dean moments after he learned of the break-in, and by Saturday afternoon Washington time the two of them had already set a cover-up in motion. Although in his own book Magruder omitted their Saturday conversations and followed that he didn't talk to Dean until Monday Magrutheir cover-up line der inadvertently left a hint of what really happened that Monday morning: Seeing Liddy at CRP headquarters, Magruder told him, "Gordon, let's face it, you and I can't work together. Why don't you talk to Dean? He's going to help us on this problem." Liddy said that he would do just that, and that he had already shredded his incriminating records. Magruder nodded, and said he would call Dean "and ask a conspiracy to cover

—

him

—

to call you." Clearly, the "not-a-self-starter"

have done so

Dean had not

if

Dean himself were not

Magruder wouldn't

previously agreed to talk to Liddy, or

if

so deeply involved in the planning of the break-

such a suggestion would have been entirely reasonable. Either

in that

way. Dean was in the park

in,

not out of the picture before Liddy even took a walk

with him that day.

Dean paints a psychologically neat picture of his mind leading up to that open-air meeting. He wrote that he

In Blind Ambition, state of

CRP

and left a message, then kicked himself because he realized such a message might implicate him in knowing that "Liddy's it all mixed up in this." He found a reason to let himself off the hook could have been a legitimate call about campaign finance laws and steadied himself, "but the fears had already set in." Then he "grimly pictured" what would happen if Liddy came to see him at the White

called the

— —

House and there was

a

record of Liddy entering the

EOB

to see

Dean

at 11:15 A.M., for records on entering visitors were routinely kept by

the Executive Protection Service.

1 still

his tortured reasoning

had

a

White House

prevent his having to give

is

nonsense, since, as

pass. it

Dean had

we

have noted, Liddy

previously intervened to

up, so Liddy wouldn't have to sign in to

the White House.

Indeed, Liddy flashed his pass at the guard, and approached Dean's

with some satisfaction. As he noted in Will,

"I was pleased who had recruited intelligence was the man me for the because Dean arm of the committee and the logical choice to serve as damage control

office

A Walk in the Park officer for the

White House.

assistance in getting our

men

Now

I'd

1 11

be getting some decisions and

out on bail."

and when Liddy approached, said only to him, "Let's go for a walk." Familiar with the conventions of clandestine work, Liddy obliged without objection. They went out through a side door of the EOB and silently walked south on 1 7th Street until they stopped at a park across the street from the stately Corcoran Art Gallery. According to Dean, Liddy needed a shave, wore a rumpled suit, and was disheveled and tired from a weekend of shredding papers and covering his trail. Dean was dressed in his usual crisp, lawyerly attire that only clashed a bit with the blond hair that hung over his suit collar. According to W?7/, Liddy had been

Dean was nervously waiting

up

and had changed and shaved before going

early,

The

in the hall,

to

CRP.

difference between the shaved and not-shaved descriptions

just the

is

beginning of the disparity between the two versions of the

Liddy was unshaved. Dean tried to nudge his readers in the direction of viewing Liddy as a strange man who was out of control and who could very easily be blamed for the debacle of event. In writing that

—

the break-in.

When

they started to

talk,

Liddy wanted

know whether Dean so, he would tell Dean

to

"damage control action officer." If that he was that man, and Liddy proceeded to lay it all on the line. According to Liddy's version, he then told Dean, "I was commanding the aircraft carrier when it hit the reef. I accept full responsibility. All of the people arrested are my men. You remember the intelligence operation you recruited me for and those meetings in the AG's office? Well, by the time that damn thing was finally approved we were down to a quarter million." The decrease in funding, Liddy explained, was why he'd had to use McCord instead of an outsider who could not have been linked to the CRP. Dean was, Liddy wrote, "distinctly uncomfortable" at being reminded that he had recruited Liddy and had been a participant in the first two GEMSTONE meetings. According to both Dean and Liddy would be

his

everything.

versions.

anybody

Of

Dean agreed

Dean then in the

course

interrupted to ask the crucial question:

White House connected

Dean knew

—

Was

to the break-in?

very well that someone in the White

House

was involved himself. His question seems to have been designed to learn if Liddy understood that, too, since the actual instruction for the second break-in had been transmitted to Liddy through Magruder without mention of Dean. Liddy pondered for a moment and answered, "Gordon Strachan. ... I don't know that he knew the exact day we were going back in there, but ..."

GOLDEN BOY

178

In Dean's published version of this tete-a-tete, this was a

moment

know more," he wrote, "because I had to assume that if Strachan knew, Haldeman knew. And if Haldeman knew, the President knew. It made sickening sense." of great revelation. "I really didn't want to

These

lines in

Dean's book point the reader toward the ultimate

Nixon, and obscure

all

villain,

other possible interpretations. But the mention

Dean to gulp and pause on For Strachan knew that Dean was the Nixon

of Strachan by Liddy would have caused quite another account:

—

administration focal point for political intelligence chan's view but in reality self-anointed.

more. At the very identify

him

as

least.

having

And

officially in Stra-

Strachan

Dean must have worried known in advance about

may have known

that Strachan

the

DNC

might

break-ins.

The

Strachan name was a dangerous one for Dean, and throughout the coming months he concealed the notion that Liddy had told him on June 19 that he thought Strachan was involved. Dean kept that fact from the Senate Watergate committee in its hearings, and gave the senators and the watching television public a truncated version of this walk in the park. To them, he said that when he'd asked Liddy whether anyone in the White House had been involved, Liddy had answered "no." But Dean hadn't simply forgotten what Liddy said; in his March nine 13, 1973, conversation with the president. Dean told Nixon months after he had "learned" the fact from Liddy that Strachan knew about the break-in. We will examine later why Dean told the president of Strachan's involvement at that particular time, and why he did not tell the same thing to the Watergate committee. But Liddy thought that in telling this to Dean he was, in effect, telling it to the president, whom he very much wanted to protect. "My whole reason for talking to Dean [in the park]," he told us recently, "was I thought I was conveying information to the president of the United States to let him know exactly what the situation was. ... I wanted him to know what the situation was so that he could deal with it." Liddy had no sense that Dean was operating on his own, and believed Dean was operating with the specific knowledge of such superiors as Mitchell, Haldeman, and/or the president himself, or else he would not have been so forthcoming. Liddy's complete trust in Dean-as-the-message-carrier was evident in what he said next in the conversation: a plea for assistance to the arrested burglars. He wanted them out of jail, and he wanted financial support for them in the period before their trial. According to Dean, when Liddy raised the issue of support for the burglars. Dean cut him off, saying, as he later wrote, "I can't do

—

—

A Walk in the Park anything about that, and

I

179

think you understand

why

I

can't

do

anything about that." is as different as night is from from innocence. According to Liddy, it was Dean himself who promised bail, attorneys' fees, and support for the burand he did so, Liddy reports, immediately after Liddy glars' families had explained that these same Cubans had been involved in the earlier

Liddy's version of Dean's response

day, as culpabiHty

is

—

break-in at the office of Dr. Fielding, Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist.

Liddy assured Dean that

as professionals "they

won't talk," but

it

was

them out on bail because "that D.C. jail's a hellhole, summer, and they expect it. They were promised that

"imperative" to get especially in

kind of support."

Dean made single senior

these promises on his own, without having talked to a

member

of the administration, not Mitchell, nor Ehrlich-

man, nor Haldeman. "Everyone'll be taken care of," Liddy quotes Dean as saying. In his book, Liddy notes that Dean later denied promising support money, but Liddy is adamant that Dean specifically did so, and that while doing so, "Dean's tone of voice was confident, but the look on his face was decidedly troubled." Liddy then sought to assure Dean that, having been captain of the ship, "I'm prepared to go down with it. If someone wants to shoot me just tell me what corner to stand on and I'll be there, O.K.?" Liddy recalled that Dean searched his face to see if he was joking, and discerned that Liddy was not. Liddy evidently believed that this offer to be killed on demand would convince Dean as to the extent of his loyalty to the Nixonian cause. Since Dean had shown himself to Liddy as a true damage control officer by promising to help the foot soldiers, Liddy now tried to assist Dean. There would be an FBI investigation, former FBI-man Liddy told the young White House counsel, and Dean should make an effort to obtain the raw data, the "FD-302s" that field agents regularly filed and the "airtels" that were sent to them; the former would enable Dean to know what information was coming in to headquarters, and the latter would tell him who the FBI planned to interview next. Dean must have been grateful for this insider's tip it would assist him enormously in running the cover-up during the next months and then introduced his main topic of concern: Howard Hunt. Where was he, these days? Hunt was lying low, Liddy said, trying to dodge reporters, and Dean commented that it would be a good idea, in light of "what you've told me" (which Liddy took as a reference to the Dr. Fielding break-in), for Hunt to take a powder. Hunt's wife and children .

.

.

—

—

GOLDEN BOY

180

were in Europe, and Liddy offered to pass the word that Hunt should join them there. "The sooner the better," Liddy quotes Dean as responding. "Today, the

if

possible."

They had begun walking again and Dean was about EOB. Hopping impatiently from foot to foot, he

to

go back into

told Liddy, "I

it's a good idea for me to be talking with you anymore." Liddy asked who the new damage control action officer would be, and Dean told him that that person would "come to you and identify himself." Though mystified, Liddy saluted and left. First Dean had said he was the action officer, enabling Liddy to tell him everything; once Liddy had spilled all that he knew, and identified the potential trouble spots. Dean then informed Liddy that he was no longer the action officer, and waved him off into limbo. Assured that Liddy would keep silent on Dean's own involvement in the break-in, and that Liddy did not suspect him of any actions in regard to the

don't think

instigation of the cover-up,

Dean could now

safely proceed

with

many

other matters.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman agreed to give Dean the task of finding out what had really happened at the break-in. After Dean returned from his

park-bench meeting with Liddy, he was

man

summoned

to see Ehrlich-

noon and given his orders. Though Dean reported to the Senate that he told Ehrlichman "in full" his conversation with Liddy, he actually gave Ehrlichman very little of the substance, concealing, for instance, 1) Liddy 's statement concerning the involvement of Strachan, 2) the request for bail and support money, and 3) his instruction to Liddy to get Hunt out of the country. Dean would later claim that at a at

meeting around four that afternoon, in the presence of Colson, ELhrlichman told Dean to call Liddy and have Liddy tell Hunt to get out of the country. Dean claims he dutifully made the call, but then, in his version, had second thoughts and returned to tell Ehrlichman and

Colson that sending Hunt away was not "very wise." They agreed, whereupon Dean says he got on the horn to Liddy and at the last moment prevented Hunt from leaving the country.

When

the Watergate Special Prosecutors indicted the cover-up

conspirators, the third "overt act" was a charge that P'.hrlichman had

ordered Hunt through Dean and Liddy to flee the country. Dean's version is untrue, say Liddy, Colson, Ehrlichman, and the

Liddy reports that Dean ordered Hunt out of the country even before the counsel saw Ehrlichman. Ehrlichman denies attempting to send Hunt away, and points out that shortly before Dean was to leave the White House in April 1973, Dean tried to facts.

As we have

seen,

ft

A Walk in the Park him

remembering

181

EhrHchman, had sent Hunt out Dean had successfully played the same trick on Haldeman, "reminding" him of a meeting at which Haldeman supposedly "turned off" any Liddy-sponsored bugging operation. But EhrHchman didn't buy Dean's ploy; he told Dean then that it was untrue, and went to Colson to check his memory. inveigle

into

of the country.

The

that he,

reader will recall that

Colson recalled the event vividly, and verified Ehrlichman's own memory. Recently, in an interview with us, Colson expanded on what had

June 19, Dean had advised Colson that he'd already ordered Hunt to flee, and Colson had then told him that was "the dumbest thing I ever heard. You better get actually happened. Earlier in the day of

,

him back," whereupon Dean went

to the

phone and

,

.

called

Liddy

for

the last-minute retrieval.

Dean, Howard Hunt recalled the incident just that way, too, in his 1974 memoir. Undercover, saying that he had received the first call from Liddy around 1 1:30 in the morning to meet him on yet another park bench, this one on 18th Street. There, Hunt was startled to learn that "they" wanted him out of town, and he protested that "What I do need is a lawyer." Liddy agreed to find him one if Hunt would prepare to leave the country. He went home to pack, and "half an hour later" Liddy called to say that the orders had Even more damaging

been changed.

The

for

time sequence

tallies well

with Colson's remem-

brance of the event. In sum, the 4:00 p.m. meeting in Ehrlichman's

had nothing to do with getting Hunt out of the country; yet Dean later used that meeting in his sworn testimony to place blame for the incident on his superior. office

Who

would have benefited if Hunt had gone out of the country.^ Not whom Hunt seemed most closely tied, for Colson had vetoed the idea, knowing that if Hunt did vanish, the finger of suspicion would point even more strongly at himself. EhrHchman didn't want Hunt to leave, and neither did Gordon Liddy, for much the same reasons for Hunt to take a powder would heap suspicion on Colson, who was known far and wide as Nixon's wild man, which wouldn't be good for the boss. The only man in the power structure who had a reason for wanting E. Howard Hunt out of the country was John Wesley Dean, because the longer Dean could keep Hunt from saying anything to the authorities, the better off Dean would be. The order to send Hunt away had been reversed, and Hunt was to Colson, to

—

Two questions about him continued to bother Monday afternoon. Was Hunt still on the White

remain in the country. the participants that

GOLDEN BOY

182

House payroll? And what was inside the safe he still kept in the White House? Dean handled the second of these matters several hours before he met with Ehrlichman and Colson at 4:00 p.m. Early that afternoon, he asked Bruce A. Kehrli, another one of Haldeman's assistants and the

man who

dealt with

White House personnel matters,

to enter Hunt's

were any and clean them out." Kehrli found only stationery in the desk, but located a locked safe, and removed the safe to a storage room. In that safe were several kinds of political explosives, ranging from powder caps to dynamite to plastique, and Hunt knew it. Even earlier in the day, he had visited his old office for the last time, browsing about in the hours before he received his first call of the day from Gordon Liddy. He tidied up a bit, and then, on his way out, told Colson's secretary, "I just want you to know that the safe is loaded." It sure was. In that safe were: a .25 caliber automatic revolver with a live clip of ammunition; McCord's attache case, which contained tear gas canisters and electronic gear; the CIA psychological profile of Daniel Ellsberg and other material on Ellsberg; classified material on the Pentagon Papers; a folder on Hunt's investigations of Ted Kennedy; fabricated State Department cables created by Hunt to link President John Kennedy to the 1963 assassination of South Vietnamese President'' Ngo Dinh Diem; a pop-up address book; and last but not least, as we two black, cloth-bound notebooks made by shall see in later chapters office and, as Kehrli later testified in a civil suit, "see if there

materials or papers

left

—

the

Hermes

—

firm.

Kehrli and Deputy Press Secretary Ken W. Clawson joined Colson, Dean, and Ehrlichman at 4:00 p.m. Colson had been insisting that Hunt had left his staff on March 31, 1972, but Ehrlichman wasn't going to take his word for that and so had ordered Kehrli to bring Hunt's employment records to the meeting. Clawson would handle expected press inquiries about Hunt because Ziegler was still in Florida with the president. 1 here was consternation because although a Colson assistant had sent a memo asking payroll to drop Hunt by the first of April, there was no reflection in the personnel files that this had actually been done. Well, that would have to be pursued. Fortunately, the safe had been removed from the Hunt office, and the conferees discussed what to do with it. Most of the people in the room didn't know what was in the safe; they had no idea, for example, that it contained a gun. Colson had some suspicions that the Dr. Fielding stuff might be in there, but he didn't know what else. Dean didn't know the precise contents yet

t

^

A Walk in the Park either,

but must have suspected there might be material in the safe that

could link him with

Hunt more

understood. That was "I

183

suggested to

testified to the

why

Dean

strongly than the others in the

he'd already

begun

to act as if

room

he owned

it.

that he take custody of the safe," Colson later

Senate committee in a closed-door session about that

4:00 P.M. conference. "It was

my

view that the White House counsel

had a responsibility to secure the safe and any other evidence." Ehrlichman agreed, and said that Kehrli and Dean should be present

when

the safe was drilled open

by

technicians, so that, as

Ehrlichman

who

later testified, "there ought to be people could, one day, tell what had happened." In legal parlance, this would preserve what Ehrlichman (a lawyer, as were Colson and Dean) correctly labeled, "the chain

of evidence."

But that chain of evidence was now had sent the

men

into the

in the

hands of the person

who

DNC in the first— and in the second—place,

John Dean.

By the evening of June 19, 1972, confusion reigned in both the White House and the CRP about the burglary and the arrested men. Dean and Magruder had set certain cover-up events in motion, but in the cadres of people in high places in the Nixon power centers, only they knew about them. Compounding the confusion were personal rivalries among Nixon's top men, a tension the president understood and even fostered at times. Two damage control/investigative teams were at work, one in each headquarters. In the White House, Haldeman had given the assignment to Ehrlichman, who had charged Dean with the work; at the Committee to Re-elect, Mitchell (still in California) had assigned Bob Mardian the task of digging up the facts. Since each camp harbored quite

a bit

of distrust for the other, neither was inclined to

share information.

The

information gap opened partly because John Mitchell believed

the break-in

had been engineered by the White House, most probably

by Chuck Colson,

who had been

continued to conceal from Mitchell that

Hunt's superior. Jeb Magruder

(as

he had from Haldeman) the fact

he had personally instructed Liddy to go into the

On

the

White House

side,

DNC.

though Dean knew precisely what was

going on, no one else had a clue. Neither Ehrlichman nor

Haldeman

make any sense out of what they had been told was Liddy's personal decision to go into the DNC. In any event, it seemed a CRP problem, especially after McCord had been implicated. Colson was

could

backing away as fast as he could go, and was thankful that although his

GOLDEN BOY

184

former employee Hunt was up to his neck in it, the other people of the break-in all seemed to be from the Mitchell camp. Neither camp was particularly interested in dealing with the other, and both were content to leave matters to the one man who seemed easily able to talk to both sides, John Dean. That was why, when John Mitchell finally reached Washington on the evening of June 19, and called a meeting in his apartment in the Watergate complex among his top aides

—Mardian, LaRue, and Magruder—he

also invited

John Dean

to stop by.

The mood was despondent

apartment only What was needed, agreed the men with drinks in their hands, was a public relations strategy to deal with the crisis. Mitchell was frequently called in the well-appointed

yards away from where the burglary had taken place.

to the telephone to

calm

his wife,

who had remained

Martha,

in

whose behavior bordered on hysteria. "More drinks were passed around," Jeb Magruder recalled of this meeting in his California and

book, "and

The

up.

I

could see a long evening of booze and self-pity shaping

prospect was not an inviting one."

Magruder,

like

Dean, was saying very little in this meeting, and men had too much to hide the orders to

—

nothing of substance. Both

Liddy

to break into the

McCord from

jail,

name

a

the attempt to get Kleindienst to spring

the attempt to get

the information that to

DNC,

Dean had

Hunt out of

the country, and

all

learned from Liddy that morning, just

few key pieces of information kept from Mardian, LaRue,

and Mitchell. In later testimony, Mitchell was caustic about Dean's silence in that meeting, particularly because talks earlier in the

Dean did not

reveal his

day with Liddy. Had Dean told the group what Mitchell would have taken some strong actions and

Liddy had to say, possibly ended the cover-up very quickly.

Before the commiseration party ended, Magruder got up to leave; he had received an unexpected invitation to round out a tennis foursome with Vice President Spiro Agnew. Magruder wrote in his book,

"Before the

left,

I

however,

GEMSTONE

I

file,' I

addressed a said.

'Maybe you ought to have a replied. I nodded and left." Later in the evening

final

question to Mitchell.

'I

have

'What do you want me to do with it?' your house tonight,' Mitchell

little fire at

— but not

until after trading lobs

— Magruder claims he did burn those

president

files.

with the vice

And when

federal

prosecutors brought their case against the cover-up conspirators, they

this

on this Magruder allegation. The prosecutors contended that meeting confirmed Mitchell's prior knowledge of Liddy's activities,

and

listed Mitchell's

relied

order to "have a

little fire"

as the fifth overt act of

A Walk in the Park

185

the cover-up. But the evidence suggests that Mitchell did not give that order. Mitchell and

Mardian deny

it

and, as

we

shall see,

even Dean's

version of the meeting supports Mitchell and Mardian.

Mitchell testified that he had no recollection of a discussion of the

GEMSTONE

files

or wiretap logs, or of instructing anyone to burn

anything. Mardian testified that he had been there for the entire

meeting and that "no such discussion took place in my presence. I I would have recalled such a discussion had it taken place in my

think

presence."

LaRue

initially

upheld Magruder's allegation.

"there was a reference to

files

He

testified

that

pertaining to electronic surveillance,"

and that he recalled Mitchell saying, "it might be a good idea if he [Magruder] had a good fire in his house." LaRue even pleaded guilty to being a party to the destruction of those files and was sent to jail for that. Today, however, LaRue is troubled about what precisely went on in that meeting. He pointed out in an interview with us that Mitchell was distracted by the repeated phone calls from Martha, and that when Magruder spoke of files, he did not make a clear reference to the GEMSTONE papers. "If Magruder said, 'I have some sensitive papers, and what's wrong with burning the sons-of-bitches?', that doesn't mean it has anything to do with the Watergate break-in." Therefore, he believes, it was possible for Mitchell to have assented to Magruder's destruction of files without knowing what files Magruder meant. After all, Mitchell believed then, and believed to his dying day, that he had never approved any break-ins and had never seen any fruits of the wiretaps, so he would not have known what Magruder was referring to.

Curiously, John Dean's testimony supported Mitchell's and Mardian's.

Since at so

many

into the conspiracy, sion,

it is

Dean tried hard to bring Mitchell name so many times without permis-

other points

and used

interesting that

his

Dean

did not agree that Mitchell had ordered

the destruction of evidence injeb Magruder's fireplace.

M. Nixon was angry on Tuesday morning, June 20. A front-page story in the Washington Post by a young reporter named Bob Woodward assaulted his eyes. In it was the information that Howard Hunt's name appeared in the burglars' address books, that one President Richard

had been found on the person of one of the Cubans, and that Hunt had been a consultant to White House Special Counsel Charles Colson. Haldeman had already convened a senior meeting on the whole affair for ten that morning, and Nixon hoped it would yield some answers. Though Colson had denied to Haldeman, of Hunt's signed checks

— GOLDEN BOY

186

Ehrlichman, and Nixon any continuing connection to Hunt, the newspapers were on to that connection, and that was bad for the White

House. Moreover, the Democratic Party had already filed a $1 million civil suit against the CRP for invasion of privacy and violation of civil rights.

The

10:00 a.m., June 20, meeting was held in Ehrlichman's office

the one in which he'd produced Admiral Welander's confession six

—

and was attended by Haldeman, Mitchell, Kleinearlier and Dean. The first subject, as always, was leaks. How had the information about McCord and Hunt gotten out? Kleindienst assured the men that it had not come from Justice, but from the Metropolitan Police Department. Dean maintained a deep silence, and the other men were completely in the dark about the events, so there wasn't much to discuss. Haldeman and Ehrlichman harbored doubts about Mitchell's role in the break-in, but, according to Haldeman's memoir, though the meeting produced no new information he was glad to see that Mitchell "looked better than I had seen him in days. He puffed on his pipe with that humorous glint in his eye that we all knew so well, I felt that was a good sign because Mitchell was now the Chairman of CRP, and should have been worried if there was a major crisis impending. Instead, he said, 'I don't know anything about that foolishness at the DNC. I do know / didn't approve the stupid thing.' We believed him and that lightened our mood considerably." Dean left that meeting in the company of Kleindienst, and returned to Justice with the attorney general. Kleindienst was furious about the break-in and about Liddy's approach to him at Burning Tree. Dean said nothing about his role in those events. When they reached the Justice building and the two men were joined by Henry Petersen, the

months

dienst,

—

assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division. Dean's

motive for making the trip became investigative reports prepared

on's

name

clear:

by the

He wanted

field agents.

the P BI 302s, the

Dean invoked Nix-

to get them.

"7 he representation that he [Dean] made to me and to Mr. Petersen throughout was that he was doing this for the President of the United States and that he was reporting directly to the President," Kleindienst later testified. Kleindienst and Petersen quite properly refused to give up the 302s, which were raw data, and said they would only supply

summaries of the data. The attorney general added that if the president wanted to see the reports, he would take them to Nixon himself. Dean left, empty-handed. Meanwhile, back at the White House, Haldeman was reporting to

A Walk in the Park Nixon what had happened

in the ten o'clock

particulars of that conversation will never be

tape in which there

is

new notion on how

that

187

meeting

—but the exact

known, because

that's the

the infamous eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap.

A

gap came into being will be offered in a later we can suggest some of what was covered in the meeting, based on the memoirs of both participants. According to both men, Nixon's main interest was in the Hunt-Colson connection. He had learned from Col son that Hunt had been involved in the Bay of Pigs operation, and that gave him an idea. As he chapter, but at this point in the narrative

RN, Nixon told Haldeman that the way to play the it had been a Cuban operation, perhaps designed learn how the Democrats were going to view Castro in the coming to election; that would stir the anti-Castro community in Miami "to start a public bail fund for their arrested countrymen and make a big media issue out of it." This would damage the Democrats and at the same time turn the Watergate affair into something favorable to the White

remembered

in

break-in was to say

House. This reaction was vintage Richard Nixon. Watergate would become simply another battle in his lifelong war with the Democrats. Floundering in ignorance as to how the affair had begun, and instead of attempting to solve the crime, Nixon was busy calculating how he might use it to strike at his enemies. Among the hallmarks of Nixon's personality were a penchant for turning away

from

facts

and continual

attempts to transform problems for himself into problems for his opposition.

While the president was constructing his fantasy scenario, John men were trying to ascertain facts. Bob Mardian was in charge, and he decided to talk to Liddy directly on the afternoon of the twentieth, at Fred LaRue's apartment (near Mitchell's) in the Watergate complex. Liddy was nearly as direct with them as he had been with Dean. He spoke convincingly of his supervision of the failed break-in and of his other operations with Hunt, including the burglary at Dr. Fielding's office in Beverly Hills and the ITT affair, in which Hunt attempted to get lobbyist Dita Beard to deny a news report of a secret money deal between the White House and ITT that involved Mitchell's

the Republican convention.

Mardian and LaRue

what Liddy the CIA, ties that also were evident in the Dr. Fielding break-in and in the trip Hunt made to see Dita Beard in a hospital bedroom in Denver for instance. Hunt had worn a CIA-made wig to disguise himself on that venture. Nothing in this explanation squared with their already-formed tried to follow the implications of

was saying. McCord, Hunt, and the Cubans

all

had

ties to

—

GOLDEN BOY

188

view that the break-in had been

a

White House operation spawned by

Colson.

Liddy informed Mardian and LaRue that neither the Cubans nor talk; then he added the absolutely vital fact that the previous day a person at the White House had assured him that, as he wrote in his memoir, "they'd all be receiving the usual family support and legal fees. I stressed that they should be bailed out as soon as possible." In Liddy 's version, he said he told the men that the man who promised the money was Dean. Mardian disagrees on this important point, and says Liddy only suggested that the promise had come from some White House person. Because of his set of mind, Mardian assumed that person had to have been Chuck Colson. Liddy also told the men that Magruder had pushed him to go back

McCord would

into the

DNC.

Magruder? Mardian and LaRue wondered how Magruder could be involved if this were a CIA or a Colson operation, but Liddy was quite definite about it, and they had to accept the statement at face value. Liddy left the meeting, and Mardian and LaRue took the substance of what they had heard to Mitchell, including the idea that support be paid to the burglars.

As Mardian

circumstances would bail

Mr. Liddy and heard for the

"Mr. Mitchell told me that under no money be forthcoming, and for me to call

later testified,

tell

first

him.

And

I

did so." In other words,

when

Mitchell

time of the requests for support money, he issued an

emphatic no on behalf of the employer of record, the CRR "Mitchell appeared to be as sincerely shocked as I was when I got this information." LaRue too testified that Liddy had told them of his and Hunt's escapades, and of the promises made to him and the burglars, and they had conveyed all this to their chief. Mitchell seems not to have taken the accusation about Magruder at face value. As he later testified when asked if Magruder had been involved in the break-in, "We had people such as Mr. Liddy and so forth say yes, that Magruder was involved, Magruder was saying no at one time and maybe yes the other time, and so forth," and Mitchell seemed convinced that whoever pushed the button, the whole affair was a derivative of a Colson-directed dirty tricks campaign orchestrated by Liddy and Hunt. As with the other senior officials, Mitchell knew Magruder wasn't a self-starter, and had to have been acting on orders from someone else. Mitchell's mistake was to assume that the person who started Magruder's battery was Colson, rather than Dean. Mardian, Mitchell, and LaRue chewed on the substance of these

A Walk in the Park

189

during the afternoon and on into the evening. All three men had apartments either in or near the Watergate complex, and were close companions, near-bachelor buddies in the days when shocking notions

all

Martha Mitchell was sliding into alcoholism, despair, and rage. Often, they'd move from the CRP offices in the late afternoon to Mitchell's apartment in the early evening, have a few drinks, order in Chinese food, and continue their discussions of the day until they all felt it was time to turn in. The discussion of the afternoon-evening of June 20 followed this pattern, except that LaRue and Mardian spent that afternoon interviewing Gordon Liddy, and joined Mitchell in the evening.

In any event, after learning the

Mitchell did not immediately

and

in

no way

call

news from Mardian and LaRue,

Richard Nixon with the information

tried to confront his close friend. "I believed at that

and maybe

was wrong, but it occurred lid on through the election ... we wanted to keep the lid on. We were not volunteering everything," he testified. He added that if he had, the president "would have lowered the boom" on his subordinates and the resulting publicity would have hurt his reelection. In essence, Mitchell argued, by keeping the president uninformed, he had saved Nixon from himself. This was Mitchell's cardinal mistake in the entire Watergate affair. As we have seen, he tried to turn off GEMSTONE on three occasions, and believed he had never agreed to fund any illegal entries. Moreover, he did not send Kleindienst any illegal message to spring McCord from jail, and also refused to pay bail for the burglars. He acted entirely within the law on those occasions. But when apprised of quite a few facts about the affair, Mitchell decided not to go to Nixon, for he feared that if Colson were exposed as the mastermind and fired, public reaction would be so negative that Nixon's reelection campaign would be damaged. particular time,

to

me

that the best thing to

in retrospect

do was

it

just to

keep the

John Dean had promised Kleindienst and Petersen at Justice that when he returned to the White House he would directly brief the president about Watergate, but he didn't do that. Dean had a more personally important task to accomplish namely, to examine the contents of

—

While the Mardian meetings with Liddy and then Mitchell were taking place, Dean was finally studying those contents, in conjunction with Fred Fielding. The previous evening, while Dean had been at the Mitchell apartment, Kehrli and the technicians had opened Hunt's safe, found the gun, and had immediately tried to get hold of Dean. Failing to reach him, they had found his associate and trusted Hunt's

safe.

GOLDEN BOY

190

who had

friend Fred Fielding,

helped Kehrli and the technicians pack

the contents of the safe into cardboard boxes to be secured overnight.

Dean

what while he and Fielding only glanced at the documents, they were concerned about "the public impact some of these documents might have." He told Fielding to segregate the most politically sensitive papers, while he placed McCord's briefcase in a later testified

locked closet in his office and hid Hunt's personal papers in his safe.

The remaining Hunt

materials, he testified,

were

left in

cartons on the

floor of the office.

not tell the Senate that the Hunt papers he placed in his were the two Hermes notebooks and the pop-up address book, which he placed beneath the documents that dealt with President

Dean did

safe

Nixon's personal estate plan. As Hunt

notebooks contained what he knew about

Hunt wrote

later testified himself,

GEMSTONE;

in his

that they contained specific references to Dean's

one of Liddy's "principals" on GEMSTONE. mation Dean absolutely had to hide or destroy. as

—

Dean

And

that

these

book,

own

was

role

infor-

two conversations he had on the afternoon and evening of June 20, 1972. Both, we now know, were complete fabrications designed to keep readers from discovering the In Blind Ambition,

holes in Dean's

The

own

tale

relates

of noninvolvement.

story was one that,

first

have been essential for him to Mitchell. Here's the

Dean

tell

if it

had actually happened, would

to the Senate, because

version:

it

implicated

Toward the end of the afternoon,

Jeb Magruder came to see Dean, and they walked together back toward the CRP offices. Magruder wanted to speak of events in early February; a story of how Colson had been pushing him "like mad" to Liddy-Hunt program going, and that as a consequence he had brought up the GEMSTONE plan again to Mitchell in Key Biscayne. Dean quotes Magruder as saying that Colson "kept calling me and asking what's going on. So I went to Mitchell and I told him. I said,

he related get the

'Listen, if

we

At that

don't take care of this Colson's going to take

instant.

Dean

writes,

it

over!'

"

he and Magruder were crossing

Pennsylvania Avenue, and he was so thunderstruck by Magruder's hit by a bus rounding the corner. In was then that he experienced the great revelation of how the Watergate affair had begun: Magruder, knowing that "Mitchell was jealous and leery of Colson," had "pushed Mitchell's 'Colson

admission that he was nearly

Dean's version,

button.'

me

it

"

Poppycock, Magruder says of this Dean story. "If Colson had told to go into the Watergate, I would have ignored it," he told us

A Walk in the Park recently.

The

conversation never happened. If

have testified to

it

as

he

testified to

many

Mitchell. But he never had that talk with

191

it

had, Magruder would

other matters that implicated

Dean on June

20.

Dean's second story involves Bob Mardian. In the Dean version,

he had finished with Magruder at the CRP headquarters, he saw Mardian, and he and Mardian talked through the afternoon and "into after

commitments to the arrested men would be honored. Supposedly Mardian said he didn't like the implications of Liddy's idea, and Dean told him that he didn't like them either, a stance that neatly exculpated Dean himself from that very commitment. Mardian denies being with Dean on June 20, or that the long

the night" about Liddy's expectation that certain

Dean describes ever took place. Among the reasons Dean version is a complete fabrication is that Mardian spent the afternoon interviewing Liddy in company of Fred conversation that

to believe that the

LaRue, and the evening with Mitchell and LaRue, rather than talking "into the night" with John Dean. Liddy's book also upholds Mardian's version; in LaRue's apartment that afternoon, Liddy said a lot to

Mardian because Mardian agreed that he was the new "damage control action officer."

Dean was so busy on the twentieth that he appears to have forgotten about Tony Ulasewicz, who had been cooling his heels in a Washington hotel room since Sunday. Near the end of the day on that Tuesday, Tony decided he'd had enough of sitting around, and flew home to New York to await any further calls from Caulfield or Dean. On Wednesday, June 21, Dean turned his full attention to the FBI investigation. Liddy had told him he needed the raw data, but Kleinall

and Petersen had refused to provide it. However, Dean's instrucfrom Ehrlichman to stay on top of Watergate provided a perfect vehicle for approaching a man very amenable to suggestions from the White House Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray. In the first of several meetings that the two men would have during the next few

dienst tion

—

on June 2 1 Gray passed to Dean some hot new information that FBI had uncovered but still didn't understand, that $114,000 in cashier's checks had been discovered in a IVIiami account belonging to burglar Bernard Barker. These were the campaign contributions that Hugh Sloan had handed to Gordon Liddy in April for laundering. One of these, for $25,000, had been made payable to a man named Kenneth Dahlberg, and the other four, totaling $89,000, were drawn on a

days, the

Mexican bank and made payable to

a

man named Manuel

Ogarrio.

The

GOLDEN BOY

192

FBI wasn't

certain,

Gray

told

Dean, but thought these were somehow

connected to the break-in.

Dean wanted

to sit in

employees. This was

on

a rather

all

FBI interviews of White House

unusual request, and Gray asked Dean

if

he was going to report directly to the president on this matter or through Haldeman or Ehrlichman. As Gray later testified to the Senate, "Mr. Dean stated he would be there in his official capacity as counsel to the President. ... He informed me that he would be reporting directly to the President."

Dean had no intention of carrying the information to the president, but Gray had been told precisely the opposite, and so said he'd allow Dean to attend FBI interviews of White House employees. As we will see, this put Dean in the catbird's seat: He would not only control the White House investigation of the crime he had initiated, but would also be in a position to influence strongly the

The

FBI

investigation.

president alternated between bouts of sulking and

vengeance.

On

Wednesday, June

—

21,

Bob Haldeman came

imagined to see

him

—

with the news evidently learned from someone at CRP that "Gordon Liddy was 'the guy who did this,' " as Nixon recalled in his

memoir. Nixon's mind seemed always to have organizational charts in view.

Hearing Liddy's name, he leaped from Liddy to Liddy's employer, John Mitchell. Could this have been Mitchell's fault? He and Haldeman kicked that around a bit but came to no definite conclusions. Instead, they focused on what Liddy, Hunt, and the Cubans could reveal that would be far more damaging than the DNC break-in the Dr. Fielding break-in and Hunt's red-wigged trip to Dita Beard's hospital bedside. the real problem for As Nixon explained in RN, "Haldeman said the White House had nothing to do with the Watergate break-in itself, but concerned what he called 'other involvements' things that an investigative fishing expedition into the break-in could uncover and exploit politically. That was what made the Democrats' civil suit the biggest problem for the White House [because] a lot of unrelated things could be uncovered in the kind of freewheeling legal depositions the Democrats clearly had in mind." He was afraid that once again he would be the victim of a conspiracy to get him by Democratic and liberal media enemies. "I told Haldeman that it seemed that the Democrats had been doing this kind of thing [bugging] to us for years, and they never got caught. Haldeman agreed that the Democrats always seemed to get off easier. He said the press just never went after them the way they went after us. Later in the day

—

.

.

.

—

.

.

.

A Walk in the Park I

said that every time the

Democrats accused us of bugging we should plant a bug and find

we were being bugged and maybe even

charge that it

193

ourselves!"

The next day, Thursday, June 22, Nixon got two pieces of good news. The Democrats' civil suit had been assigned to the court of Charles Richey, whom Nixon had appointed. He was also pleased that the FBI still did not know that Hunt and Liddy had actually been involved in the break-in. Nixon knew, but made no attempt to pass on the information to the FBI; this was one of his a

first acts in

covering up

crime in which he did not participate and which he did not under-

stand.

He

held a press conference that afternoon, and was also delighted

one question about Watergate, which he easily deflected an earlier denial issued by his press secretary: "As Mr. Ziegler has stated, the White House had no involvement whatever

to take only

with

a reference to

in this particular incident."

Meanwhile, the FBI and the CIA were holding separate meetings The crime was now almost six days old, and the FBI was beginning to develop some theories about it. Pat Gray met that day with Charles Bates, the head of the investigative division, who laid out the main theory for him. All signs seemed to point to the CIA. McCord and the Cubans had long-standing ties to the Agency, and the cashier's checks in Barker's account seemed to be laundered funds, possibly having to do with some international intelligence operation. On learning this. Gray called CIA Director Richard Helms to warn that the FBI might be poking into one of the Agency's operations. As Gray later testified, he asked Helms to confirm or deny that, and Helms told Gray he "had been meeting on this every day with his men," and while they couldn't figure out the case. Helms was sure about Watergate.

W

"there

was no

CIA

involvement."

At 6:30 P.M. that evening. Gray met again with John Dean to discuss the scheduling of interviews with White House staffers. Gray later testified that he also discussed with Dean "our very early theories of the case;

...

or a

namely

that the episode

CIA money

political operation,

of any of these."

or a

was either

chain, or a political

Cuban

The FBI

right

a

CIA

money

covert operation chain, or a pure

wing operation, or

couldn't yet

choose among

a

combination

these explana-

and couldn't figure out the motive for the burglary or the "attempted intercept of communications operation." John Dean had been doing very well in his attempts to cover all the bases so far. He had offered money to Liddy and through Liddy to the burglars; he had kept his superiors in the dark while at the same time tions,

GOLDEN BOY

194

he had been able to turn a suggestion that he investigate the case into a crowbar to pry information on the real ongoing investigation out of the

He had manv

FBI.

him

as

of the bases covered. But what Gray suggested to

—

one of the FBI's theories about the case

—

Dean

that

it

was a

CIA

way to kill the official investigation. "I remember telling iVlr. Dean in one of these early telephone calls or meetings," Pat Gray later testified, "that the FBI was going to pursue all leads aggressively unless we were told by the CIA that there operation

was

a

CIA

offered

a

interest or involvement in this case."

There was the idea

FBI could be convinced that its operation, and told to go no further, it was likely that the probe could be contained and restricted to the five men already arrested. Hunt wouldn't be dragged in, and maybe not even Liddy. That meant Dean himself couldn't be touched. It was an exciting idea for Dean, and he tried to figure out how to set it in motion. He couldn't accomplish the task by himself; he would need help from much higher up, and planned to get it in the morning. for

Dean:

If the

agents had indeed stumbled onto a

CIA

I

12

"THE SMOKING GUN

IN

;;

the previously accepted version of Watergate history, June 23,

the day on which the event occurred that would eventually Nixon presidency, an event chronicled on a White House tape known as "the smoking gun." This tape was concealed by the White House for some time after many other taped conversations in the Oval Office and Nixon's EOB office had been released in written form to Congress and the press, and was only forced out by a decision of the Supreme Court in the summer of 1974; shortly after it had become public knowledge, Nixon resigned. The reason for the long concealment seemed immediately obvious: On this tape, the president is heard directing the obstruction of justice by instructing Haldeman to have the CIA impede the FBI's investigation into the W^atergate burglary. 1972,

is

sink the

Since the tape contains the discussion of the problem, the acknowledg-

ment that there political

is

no reason

"smoking gun," that is, dence of criminal guilt.

What

to deter the investigation other than

expediency, and the issuance of the order, the tape in police

and prosecutorial slang, direct

has not been understood until

195

now

is

that the

is

a

evi-

Nixon remarks

GOLDEN BOY

196

on the smoking gun tape are the products of John Dean's deceptions that tricked Haldeman and Nixon into joining a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

As we have seen

in earUer chapters,

by June 22 Dean had already

constructed his big he to conceal his instigation of the Watergate burglary, and had begun to cover

all

traces of his involvement in events

phone on Bob Haldeman's desk rang, startling him a bit, since he generally expected no calls before a regular, early morning meeting with the president. John Dean was on the line. As Haldeman recounted in his book The Ends of Power, in that conversation Dean told him that the FBI was "out of control," and that Acting Director Gray "doesn't know what the hell to do, as usual," because one check in Bernard Barker's account bore the signature of Kenneth Dahlberg and others had come from a Mexican bank that the FBI already had found. "They'll know who the depositors are today," Dean warned Haldeman, who responded sarcastically that this was "great news." Haldeman made notes on a pad (which he later used to reconstruct this conversation) as Dean continued on to tell him that "our problem now is to stop the FBI from opening up a whole lot of other things," especially the names of contributors who had been guaranteed anonymity. Mitchell and Stans, Dean said, "are really worried about that," and "they say we have to turn off that investigation of the Mexican bank fast, before they [the FBI] open up everything and spread this mess a lot wider than it is." Having softened up Haldeman with the bad news and, indeed, it was alarming news that could adversely affect the outcome of the prior to June 17. At 8:15 a.m. on Friday, June 23, the

—

— Dean now offered Haldeman

president's bid for reelection telling

him, Haldeman wrote in his book, that the FBI

CIA, and

"is

a lifeline,

convinced"

"Gray has wav out of this mess. / spoke to Mitchell, and he and I agree the thing to do is for you to tell Walters [Deputy Director of the CIA General Vernon Walters] that we don't know where the Mexican and maybe the investigation is going to lead. Have him talk to Gray that the people behind the break-in were the

been looking

that

for a

—

CIA

can turn off the FBI

down

there in Mexico." (Italics added for

emphasis.) In an interview,

Dean not only suggested'''

said he

calling in the

recalled that conversation, in

which

had spoken with Mitchell but that ''Mitchell had CIA, and that Dean had simply "concurred on

added for emphasis.) 1 hus was the idea planted in Haldeman's mind and the responsibilfor the suggestion affixed to John Mitchell. Fhe chain of logic was

it." (Italics

ity

Haldeman

"The Smoking Gun"

197

most powerful: use the CIA to block the FBI so that the FBI would not stumble upon and publicize the politically explosive fact that the burglary had been committed with money given to the CRP that had been laundered. Dean was able to sell Haldeman on the idea principally because he lied on two most important points. First, he embellished what Gray had told him on the twenty-second, picking out of a grab bag of theories being developed by the FBI the one that could be best used to shut down or at least to hinder seriously its investigation. Second, and more important, he invoked "John Mitchell" to mask a desperate need to cover his

own

misdeeds.

John Dean was able to use Mitchell's name with impunity because he understood the president's confidence in the former attorney general, and because Dean himself was believed at the White House to be a Mitchell

man. Since Dean had worked

be in Mitchell's

own

confidence, even a

he was thought to Mitchell protege which he

at Justice,

—

was not. In fact.

Dean

did not even speak to Mitchell on the twenty-second,

nor on the morning of the twenty-third. Before going into the events of the twenty-third, and the tape let's

examine

this crucial point. In

Dean's

own

later

itself,

testimony to the

Senate Watergate committee, he dated his supposed conversation with Mitchell as having taken place on the afternoon of the twenty-third or

on the "smokgun" tape had occurred. But Dean testified to the committee before the White House's taping system itself had become known to the committee, and a year before the ''smoking gun'' tape was made public, and thus could not have known that evidence on the tape

the twenty-fourth, well after the conversation recorded ing

could ever be used to refute his story of having been uninvolved.

evidence became available, after

Dean had

finished his

jail

When

that

sentence and

was writing Blind Ambition, he sidestepped the whole issue, lest it come back to haunt him. In that book. Dean did not even mention the allimportant conversation with Mitchell to which he had testified, or the conception and transmittal of an idea that had such a devastating effect

on the presidency. In a recent interview after the death of John Mitchell,

Dean four times

we asked

between his testimony and the "smoking gun" tape. He could not. First, he tried to tell us it was a matter of dates, on which "it could well be that my memory is wrong. I don't know. I don't want to go back and try to figure this out; it doesn't affect my life a second." When we pointed out that there was no discussion of the supposed Mitchell conversation or the tape of the to explain the inconsistency

GOLDEN BOY

198

twenty-third in his book, he responded, "I'm sure there's a

lot

of things

that are not in the book," and pleaded that he was no longer able to his

mind on what had happened

in those days.

On

a third try,

fix

Dean

CIA involvement in Watergate and a meeting with Mitchell had been raised by the Watergate prosecutors, but that he had said then, "Guys, this is the way I remember it and, you know, that's all I can tell you." When asked a fourth time if he recognized the seriousness of having accused Mitchell of counseling that the CIA obstruct the FBI, Dean was unable to address the point at all, suggesting only that we not rely on his current memory, which was spotty, and instead go back to his testimony and book. "People

did acknowledge that the issue of

can pick

at it,"

he

but he

said, referring to the testimony,

still

stood by

it.

We

recently asked

Haldeman about

the contradictions between the

tape and Dean's statements. After reviewing our evidence,

know how he [Dean] can deny

told us, "I don't

Mitchell's involvement in his conversation with

the twenty-third.

.

.

.

The

Haldeman

that he fabricated

me on

the morning of

implications are grave for everything he said

about W^atergate." Wasn't Dean taking an incredible chance that Halde-

man would knew

not check with Mitchell before seeing the president?

wasn't checking with Mitchell on any of this stuff.

I

incredible chance, really,"

Haldeman

added, that "Whatever reports

As

I

allowed.

It

"He

wasn't an

Dean knew, Haldeman

got [on Watergate]

I

got from Dean."

for Mitchell himself, the former attorney general told us that

"Dean's whole gambit" was "to drop

my name

wherever he found

it

could work." Mitchell has always denied any conversation with Dean in which he counseled or condoned the use of the CIA to deter an FBI investigation.

confirm

this.

Mitchell's logs of meetings and

On

the twenty-second, he had called

phone conversations

Dean

at 11:15 in the

morning, but had not connected with him. That evening Mitchell left his office at 7:05 p.m., went home to his apartment accompanied by La Rue, and had no telephone conversations before an early bedtime.

Next morning at 8:15, when Dean was selling the idea to Haldeman and invoking Mitchell's name, Mitchell was at the White House for his first meeting of the day, and had had no opportunity to speak to Dean before it. Not until 6:10 that evening of the twenty-third, Mitchell's logs report, did Dean return Mitchell's call of the twenty-second and speak with him. Mitchell did see Dean at 12:30 on Saturday the twentyfourth, nearly twenty-seven hours after the "smoking gun" tape was made, when Dean joined a meeting already in progress between Mitchell, Mardian, and Magruder. We'll get into what actually happened in that meeting in the next chapter.

— "The Smoking Gun"

199

At 8:15 A.M., then, Dean planted in Haldeman's mind that it was recommendation to use the CIA to block the FBI. At 10:04, Haldeman began to brief President Nixon, and the conversation soon turned to Watergate. We've used italics to emphasize Dean's invoking of Mitchell's name: Mitchell's

H:

Now

on the

we're back

you know, the Democratic break-in thing,

investigation,

to the

—

in the, the

problem area because the FBI

Gray doesn't exactly know how

control, because

they have, their investigation

now

is

leading into

is

not under

them, and

to control

some productive

because they've been able to trace the money, not through the but through the bank, you know, sources

itself,

And,

we

goes in some directions

it

don't want

it

—the banker himself.

to go.

.

.

.

up with yesterday, and John Dean analyzed very carefully

now with MitcheWs recommendation

concludes, concurs

up

do

it,

the only network that paid any attention to

it

solve this,

and we're

set

beautifully to

they did a massive story on the P: That's right

—

H:

way

and that

night was

and

night

that the only

ah, in that last

Mitchell came

last

NBC

to

.

.

.

.

.

.

Cuban

.

.

.

areas,

money

thing.

P: Right.

now

H: That the way

to

Gray and

"Stay the hell out of this

we

just say,

you

don't want

development.

FBI Mark

.

agents

who

This

CIA.

to

and

on

this

is

for us to have .

go any further on

Ah, he

.

Felt] in

to put the hold

is

.

handle

[Pat

this

.

it."

call

is,

Pat

call

ah, business here

That's not an unusual

[Assistant Director of the

"We've got the signal from across the river

say,

this."

Gray] will

.

Wahers

And

that will

rather well because the

fit

what

arc working this case, at this point, feel that's

to,

FBI it

is.

Haldeman then told Nixon that the FBI examination of the checks might lead to Dahlberg and some Texan contributors. Nixon had no idea

who Dahlberg

was; in

fact,

the entire conversation

shot through

is

with presidential exclamations of astonishment and exasperation at the break-in and

what had been found out about

it

to date,

strongly

supporting the notion that Nixon had no knowledge whatsoever of the event prior to learning about

However, to

at this

it

on the morning of June

important juncture,

him the magnitude of Watergate,

control

employees of the

CRP

when

that

it

17.

his aide first suggested

entailed not only out-of-

(the explanation believed

by the upper

200

GOLDEN BOY

echelon just then) but

now

also

money

that could be traced to the

campaign, Nixon's reaction was strikingly similar to the one he displayed precisely six months earlier, on

December

22, 1971,

had

when

presented with the fact that Admiral Welander had confirmed the

Yeoman Radford's admissions about

essence of

a military

spy ring:

The

president sought to limit the investigations and to prevent political

damage. In December, he had acted on his own initiative; in June of 1972, he grasped at the device presented to him by John Dean, though he did not know it was Dean's. There seems to have been no hesitancy on the part of Haldeman, either, to embrace this line of action. Learning of Dahlberg and the others, Nixon's immediate response was to suggest that these people be instructed to say that they had given the money directly to the Cubans. Haldeman knew this was an unrealistic approach, and steered Nixon back to the CIA. Nixon liked the idea, reminding Haldeman, "We protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things," taking the CIA-connection line of thinking and running with it. Hunt, he suggested, was the lever: P:

.

.

Hunt

.

.

.

that will uncover a lot of things.

.

there's a hell of a lot

we

of things and that

detrimental to have this thing go any further.

Cubans, Hunt, and

a lot

H:

any much of I

think

so.

I

Nixon asked

a

don't think he

if

hell,

knew

H: Apparently.

.

Now

rest.

it

.

to

do

thing

the details, but

I

think he knew.

little

nuts"

—and

to get

Haldeman said more information.

—who the

yes, but that

.

I

1 hank

was

did

Mitchell.^

P: All right, fine,

and the

This involves these

we have nothing Mitchell know about this

the problem could be traced to Liddy

Liddy had been under pressure from

would be very

degree?

president said was "a

P: Pressure

it

of hanky-panky that

with ourselves. Well, what the to

You open that scab

just feel

understand

God

it

it all.

Wc

won't second-guess Mitchell

wasn't Colson.

settled in the president's

mind:

The

break-in seemed

t(

have been a CRP operation that had Mitchell's tacit gone amuck. He was happy and satisfied that it could not be laid where he had thought for the past few days it had actually belonged, at the that is to say, responsibility could not be placed feet of Chuck Colson approval but hac

—

I

"The Smoking Gun"

201

White House. Colson had denied any connection to the break-in to Haldeman, EhrHchman, and the president himself, in separate conversations during the past week. Now, here was confirmation of Colson's uninvolvement, seeming to come from Mitchell. Nixon and Haldeman returned to the CIA-FBI theme. Nixon said he was "not sure" of what was being described to him as the FBI's analysis that the break-in was "a CIA thing" but "I'm not going to get that involved." Nonetheless, Nixon bought Dean's package, and left it to Haldeman to wrap it properly. Haldeman should call in the CIA and lean on the agency. However, the president couldn't leave the matter without coaching Haldeman on how to "play it tough" in that meeting because "that's the way they play it and that's the way we are going to play it" with the CIA: in the

—

—

When you will

get these [CIA] people in, say, "Look the problem is that open up whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President

feels that"

—

ah, without going into the details

them

to the extent to say there

of a

comedy of

errors,

President believes that again.

And,

is

.

.

no involvement, but

bizarre,

it is

.

don't, don't

just

lie

to

just say this is sort

without getting into

it,

[say]

"The

going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up

ah, because these people are plugging for, for keeps,

that they should call the

this

FBI

in

and

say,

'That

we wish

for the

and

good of

the country don't go any further into this case.' " Period.

Note that the president apparently never considered summoning Mitchell, Gray, or anyone else, and asking them what had gone on. To do so would have been confrontational, and Nixon's style was to avoid confrontation. Even more astounding, Nixon accepted without further question the involvement of his closest friend in the administration,

John Mitchell, in the break-in and in the suggestion to obstruct by using one agency to hamper another.

Nixon clung press secretary

to that belief

Ron

throughout Watergate, complaining to

Ziegler a year later in a June 4,

conversation that "the key to this thing, Ron, the key.

.

.

.

justice,

Mitchell would never step

up

is

Mitchell.

1973, taped

Always been

to this. Well,

I

suppose,

would you? No. No. Former attorney general step up and say you bugged? Shit, I wouldn't." Mitchell had helped Nixon's fortunes through the law firm in which they had been partners, and then helped engineer Nixon's election

Nixon couldn't even pick up the phone and check on the veracity of what Mitchell was reported to him (through two victory in 1968. Yet

intermediaries.

Dean and Haldeman)

as saying or doing.

Now, without

GOLDEN BOY

202

cognizance of the

full

facts,

and badly misled, the president was

springing into action, taking the very step that would eventually seal

own fate. "I never personally confronted Mitchell" on the matter, Nixon wrote in RN, because "if there was something he thought I needed to know, he would have told me." But Nixon added another reason: If he asked and Mitchell said, " 'Yes, I did it.' Then what do his

we

say?"

Haldeman's June 23 meeting with the president ended

at

11:39

A.M., and he immediately arranged a meeting between Walters, Helms, himself, and Ehrlichman for 1:30 p.m.

Moments

before that meeting,

Haldeman poked his head in again to the Oval Office, and Nixon reemphasized the way to get the CIA to cooperate. Tell the CIA CIA look bad, officials, Nixon instructed, "it's going to make the it's going to make Hunt look bad, and it's likely to blow the whole Bay .

of Pigs thing, which

we

.

.

think would be very unfortunate for the

CIA

at this time, and for American foreign policy. them to get any ideas we're doing it because our concern is political." Haldeman answered that he understood that instruction. Haldeman was once again impressed, he writes, by Nixon's brilliant instincts. "Dean had suggested a blatant political move by calling in the CIA now Nixon showed how much more astute he was by throwing a national security blanket over the same suggestion." At 1:30, in Ehrlichman's office, the four men sat down. All the participants knew that Helms disliked Nixon and the feeling was mutual. But now Nixon had been maneuvered into believing he had a need to use Helms and his agency. The director began the conversation by surprising Haldeman with the news that he had already spoken to Gray at the FBI and had told him that there was no CIA involvement in the break-in and none of the suspects had worked for the Agency in the last two years. After Helms's surprise, Haldeman then played what he called "Nixon's trump card," telling the CIA men that the entire

and I

for the

country

.

.

.

don't want

—

might be linked to the Bay of Pigs. in the room," Haldeman reported later in his book. "Helms gripping the arms of his chair, leaning forward and shouting, 'The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this. I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs.'" Haldeman understood that Nixon had been right about mentioning the old disaster, for Helms immediately calmed down and voiced no

affair

"Turmoil

further objections to having Walters

remembrance of the meeting important the

CIA

is

tell

closely

the fact that neither

Gray

to

back

parallels

man mentioned

chiefs that the reason for asking

them

off.

Ehrlichman's

Haldeman's. Just to

as

memoir telling block the FBI was

in his

"The Smoking Gun" political;

203

following Nixon's rather precise instructions, that notion was

specifically kept out of the conversation.

At 2:20 P.M. Haldeman went back to the Oval Office and informed Nixon that "Helms kind of got the picture" and had promised, " 'We'll be happy to be helpful, to ah you know and we'll handle everything you want.' " Haldeman then added: "Walters is gonna make the call to Gray." The CIA men agreed to help, Helms would later testify, only

—

—

because they figured the president was privy to a CIA operation in Mexico that even the CIA director did not know about. "This possibility always had to exist," Helms said. "Nobody knows everything about everything."

Dean apparently had an idea about what was going on, for at 1:35 before Haldeman actually had had a chance to brief the president on the Helms meeting Pat Gray got a call from Dean apprising him that Walters would be phoning for an appointment, and that Gray should see him that afternoon. Walters' secretary called Gray twenty minutes later and scheduled a 2:30 p.m. meeting. Dean phoned that afternoon

Gray again asked Gray

—

—

at 2:19 p.m. to see if

to call

him when

it

was on, learned that

it

was, and

he'd seen Walters.

Once again, John Dean's testimony on these events is strikingly at odds with that of others. In his testimony to the Senate Watergate committee, before the committee was to hear from Gray about the Gray-Dean telephone conversations of June 23, Dean would first avoid revealing any knowledge of the Helms- Walters meeting. Then, when pressed by Senator Inouye, Dean claimed that he had "had no idea that Mr. Haldeman and Mr. Ehrlichman were going to meet with Mr. Helms and General Walters, that was unknown to me until I subsequently was so informed by Mr. Ehrlichman but not as to the substance of the meeting they had held."

Gray and Walters met at 2:34 p.m. at FBI headquarters, and, according to Gray's testimony before Congress, Walters "informed me that

we were

likely to

uncover some

CIA

continued our investigation into the Mexican discussed with

me

assets or sources if

money

chain. ...

He

we also

the agency agreement under which the FBI and

CIA

have agreed not to uncover and expose each other's sources." Acting Director Gray had never read that agreement, but considered it

and told Walters that the matter would be handled "in a manner would not hamper the CIA." By the time Gray testified in 1973, two Walters memcons had been given to the investigating committee by the CIA, and Gray was at pains to answer certain points raised by these memcons, such as the notion that he. Gray, had mentioned to Walters the fact that this was logical,

that

GOLDEN BOY

204

an election year and that there were poHtical considerations above and beyond the interagency ones. Gray admitted he might have said that; certainly, it was on both men's minds. After Walters left, Gray telephoned Dean to tell him of the meeting

—even before Gray phoned

the Watergate investigation to

his

own

assistant director in charge of

him not

to schedule interviews of Ogarrio or Dahlberg. Twice more during the afternoon Gray phoned Dean, at 3:24 and at 3:47, to report that the CIA and FBI had both tell

been properly instructed about impeding the ongoing investigation. The deed was done. Dean had succeeded beyond his expectations. He had deceived the president of the United States into joining a conspiracy to obstruct justice in order to cover up a crime that Nixon had not committed, and to conceal Dean's own crimes. And the president, once again reacting to a crisis without gathering the facts, willingly slipped the noose Dean had handed him around his own neck.

Two

gun tape would force an end to the Nixon presidency. And in 1991, the words on that astounding tape, and contradictions it pointed up in Dean's sworn testimony, would put an end to John Dean's claim of being only years from that time, the revelations of the smoking

an innocent message-carrier in the cover-up. the famous smoking

gun tape had

as

its

It is

completely ironic that

two most important

casualties

the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, and his principal accuser, John Dean.

The White House

inner circle:

Nixon, and H. R. Haldeman.

Henry

Kissinger,

(Official White

John Ehrlichman, President Richard

House photo)

Nixon and Kissinger

often con-

ducted their diplomacy through private rather than official channels. (Official

White House photo)

The president, Alexander Haig, and Kissinger were engaged egos and ambitions that fre(]ucntly placed the two advisers House photo)

at

in

an intricate dance of

cnkh. (Official White

John Mitchell was Nixon's closest friend in the administration, but their failure to communicate about the Watergate break-in had catastrophic consequences. (Official White House photo)

Navy Yeoman

Charles Radford.

(AP/Wide World

Photos)

V^ice-Admiral 1 honias H.

Moorer, upon the

his

new chairman

appointment

as

of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff on April 14, 1970.

(Geve Forte

Admiral Robert

Armed Photos)

().

Welander

(right), arriving for a closed

Pictorial Parade)

1974 hearing of the Senate affair. (AP/Wide World

Services (committee in regard to the Moorer-I^adford

Don

Stewart, the Pen-

tagon investigator

who

helped uncover the

Moorer-Radford

affair,

receiving the Pentagon's

second-highest civilian

award in recognition of his work. Six months later the White House would campaign to have Stewart indicted for blackmailing the president.

A meeting of the National Security

Council, May 1, 1972. At left are Alexander Haig, 1 homas Moorer, an unidentified man, and CIA Director Richard Helms. At right are Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, President Richard Nixon, Secretary of State William Rogers, and an unidentified man. (Official White

Henry

Kissinger, Admiral

House photo)

Bob Woodward and (UPI/Bettmann)

Carl Bernstein,

at their

desk

at the

Washington

Post.

USS

Wright, the aircraft carrier turned floating national

Bob Woodward served 1965 to 1967,

his first

Woodward

Navy

assignment.

As

command

post,

on which

the circuit control officer from

helped operate the ship's massive communications system.

(National Archives)

From 1967

to 1969,

Woodward

served as communications officer aboard the

Fox, a guided-missile frigate that helped direct air strikes in

manding

officer

on the ship was Robert O. Welander.

Vietnam. His

(National Archives)

first

USS com-

John Wesley Dean

III,

counsel to the president. (Official White House photo)

Maureen Elizabeth Kane

Owen

Biner Dean. Before she became

John Dean's

wife, she

roomed

with close friend Heidi Rikan, a.k.a.

"Cathy

ring of

Dieter,"

call girls

who

ran a

with the help of

attorney Phillip Mackin Bailley.

(Sygma)

Phillip

Mackin

after his arrest

charges of

Bailley,

on

Mann Act

violations. (Copyright

Washington Post)

Dean's four major operatives

in his intel-

ligence-gathering efforts: (above)

]ohn

"Jack" Caulfield (Sygma); (above right)

1 ony Ulasewicz, the ex New York City detective who became a private eye in service of the White House (Sygma): (below) (j. (iordon Liddy, "a

weapon

waiting to be aimed and fired" (UPI/ Bettmaiin); (below right)

\i.

Howard

Hunt, Liddy 's cohort and an ex employee (UPI/Bettmatin).

CIA

Jeb Stuart Magruder, the

Committee

to Re-elect the

President official

worked most

who

closely with

Dean. (Official White House photo)

Closeup of notebook and key confiscated from Martinez police.

The key

Maxie

Wells, secretary to

fit

by

the desk of

Democratic National Committee official

Spencer Oliver;

Martinez says he was given the

key by E. Howard Hunt, but

Hunt

denies

it.

Ill

Watergate burglar

Eugenio R. Martinez.

(UPI Bettmann)

AlcxaiKlcr laig, newly appoiiitLxl W hitc 1 louse ciucl of staff, greets newsmen H. R. Haldeinan's former office on May 4, 1973. {UPhBeUmann) I

in

J.

Fred Buzhardt

spy ring

and

its

(right,

with aides) worked with Haig to keep the Moorer- Radford

implications

— under wraps. (Official White Home photo)

Alexander Butterfield, Haig's longtime friend, revealed the White

House

taping system. (Dennis

Brack/ Black Star)

Leonard (Jarnient worked with Buzhardt

in

counseling

the beleaguered president as

Watergate began to over-

whelm him. I If/use photo)

(Official White

Richard Nixon, departing Bethesda Air Force Base and the presidency, on August 1974. (Official White House photo)

9,

President Cierald Ford, Phil Hiichcn, Alexander Haig, and Benton Becker on September 26, 1974, discussing the subjects of the Nixon pardon and the transfer of the president's records, papers,

niente

on

Haig had

and

tapes. Shortly thereafter,

Becker would

l)ehalf of President I'ord to negotiate these issues

alreatiy

been negotiating on

of Bentffn L. litrker)

his

own.

neither

(Official White

I

fly to

San Cle-

man knowing

that

huse photo / pemiissian

13

HUSH MONEYFOR HUNT

DEAN has long admitted participating in obtaining support money for the burglars,

but has said that he did so in an attempt to keep the

But had nothing to do with protecting Nixon, and everything to do with protecting Dean himself. It also had nothing to do with the burglars, and was not terrible tar

baby of Watergate from

Dean's desperate search to find

money notion

collected for their support. is

the fact that almost

all

sticking to the president.

money and pay

Among

it

the best testaments to that

of the "support"

money

raised for the

and personal expenses eventually became hush money given to Howard Hunt. At 6: 10 in the evening of June 23, after his long series of phone calls with Pat Gray, Dean phoned Mitchell and arranged to take part in a meeting on Saturday, June 24, at the CRP offices. The next day, at 12:30 P.M., he joined a meeting that was already in progress with Mitchell, Mardian, and LaRue, while Magruder came in and out. Dean later painted a brief picture for the investigating committee burglars' legal

of this meeting that he thought had taken place either Friday afternoon or Saturday morning:

205

GOLDEN BOY

206

I

reported to [these men] Gray's theories of the case as he had related

them

to

me.

sions of the

.

.

.

During

this

many problems

meeting there were wide ranging discus-

then confronting the reelection committee

including such matters as the problem the

civil

lawsuit filed

by the

Democratic National Committee could cause, the problem of the Dahlberg and Mexican checks, and to the best of first

time

of those

Dean

I

my

recollection this

had heard any discussion of the need

who were

for

money

was the

to take care

involved in the break-in of June 17.

CIA

told the Senate that a discussion of the

hypothesis "prompted Mr. Mardian, as

I

recall, to

involvement

suggest that the

CIA

might be of some assistance in providing us support, and he also CIA might have a very proper reason to do so because of the fact that these were former CIA operatives." In this version, Dean claimed that Mitchell and Mardian then told him to explore that very idea with Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Dean's testimony about this meeting is a tissue of lies and halftruths. First, this was not when Dean first learned of the need to pay support for the burglars Dean had heard the request of Gordon Liddy on this matter, and acceded to it, during their walk in the park on June 19. Second, Mardian denied being the first to bring up the idea of support at this meeting, and neither Mitchell nor Mardian told Dean to take up the support issue with Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Mardian told us that they went into the subjects that Dean lists, but that the issue of paying money for the burglars was first brought up by Dean. Mardian testified that it was Dean's mention of the CIA that pushed Mardian to exclaim that if these were CIA people, the agency could "take care of its own people," because it was "a CIA problem and not a committee [to Re-elect] problem." Here Mardian, the lieutenant, was echoing the party line already laid down by his general, Mitchell, that any payment of support was not a CRP problem, and even making light of it. Such conversational patterns were common in the close-knit group of Mardian, LaRue, and Mitchell, but the position that the CRP would not pay support money was real. As Dean had taken a theory of Pat Gray's and turned it into the notion to trick Haldeman (and, ultimately, Nixon) into using the CIA to block the FBI's investigation, Dean now took Mardian's flip remark that the CIA ought to pay for its own people and made it into an attempt to extort from the intelligence agency the funds to keep the burglars quiet. On Monday, June 26, Dean phoned P.hrlichman. Dean's testimony and Ehrlichman's account of what was said during this raised the question that the

—

phone

call

are completely at odds.

We

find

Ehrlichman's account

Hush Money—for Hunt

207

Ehrlichman told us that Dean said that it was necessary for liaise with the CIA, and asked for permission to call Walters. He did not say his purpose was to try squeezing money from the burglars' old employer, and so Ehrlichman didn't know he was condoning such a course of action when he told Dean that he could credible,

him, Dean, to

call Walters.

That the

CIA

call

came

files

at 10:00 a.m.,

Walters

remembered

that he wrote a few days later.

in a

memcon

to

In the conversation,

Dean "about the Bob Haldeman had discussed with

according to Walters, he was asked to meet with matter that John Ehrlichman and

me on the 23rd of June," and was invited to check this out with the two men before doing so. Walters dutifully phoned Ehrlichman and was told to "talk freely to Dean." So far. Dean had managed to trick both Walters and Ehrlichman about this matter of the money. But he didn't reckon on opposition from the formidable Walters. When the general arrived in Dean's White House office at 1 1:45 a.m., they fenced a bit: Dean said the "bugging" case was becoming "awkward," and that one of the FBI's theories was that it was done by the CIA, which Walters denied vehemently. To quote the memcon, "Dean then said that some of the accused were getting scared and 'wobbling'. I said that even so they could not implicate the Agency." In fact, it was not the burglars who were scared and wobbling, but Dean. We can see that in retrospect, for instance, because his intimate knowledge of the burglary and its objectives was belied by his use of the word bugging, which Walters even put in quotes in his memcon. Next, in the conversation.

Dean misrepresented

to Walters his author-

from Ehrlichman and Haldeman. As Walters later wrote. Dean asked, ostensibly on behalf of the White House, "whether there was not some way that the Agency could pay bail for [the burglars]. He added that it was not just bail, that if these men went to prison, could we (CIA) find some way to pay their salaries while they were in ization

.

jail

.

.

out of covert action funds." Walters became grim after this request, and turned

The

CIA

it

off quite

he pointed out, was that it was apolitical; if the Agency were to pay bail and salaries to the burglars it would "become known sooner or later" and would then

decisively.

value of the

escalate the scandal to ten times

to the nation,

its

original size.

"The Agency would

be completely discredited with the public and the Congress and would

and the Administration," the general memcon as telling Dean. Paying bail for the burglars "could only be done upon direction at the 'highest level.' " In

lose all value to the President

reported himself in the

GOLDEN BOY

208

Walters was clearly making reference to the president without naming him. And Walters in effect warned Dean not to go to the president by saying that if such payments were made, they would inevitably hurt those who ordered or condoned them. Dean seemed taken aback, Walters noted with some satisfaction, this,

but asked again

if

there was anything the

CIA

could do. Walters agreed

Helms, even though Walters told Dean he was sure he knew what Helms would say. Next day, Walters was again summoned to Dean's office at eleven in the morning, and reported that in the interim he had spoken with Helms, who, as W^alters had suspected, also did not want to pay the

to carry the request to

burglars. In his

memcon

of this second day Walters recalled raising the

metaphorical ante of his warning to Dean: "Involving the Agency

would transform what was now

medium-sized conventional explosive and simply was not worth the risk." Dean, Walters reports, looked "glum" but "said he agreed with my judgment in all of these matters." On Wednesday the twenty-eighth, the two men met for a third time. Dean asked for ideas about how to handle the whole Watergate affair, and Walters gave him a beauty: a

into a multi-megaton explosion

said that this affair already

I

knew

the

Cubans were

policies of both parties

had

a strong

conspiratorial

Cuban

and anxious

flavor

to

would be towards Castro. They,

and everyone

know what therefore,

the

had

a

plausible motive for attempting this amateurish job.

It was just after this third conversation, on June 28, that Walters (whose photographic memory is the stuff of legends) sat down and wrote the first of the memcons of the meetings, which were later given to several senatorial committees investigating Watergate. The commit-

tees

were quite interested

sively

in

them, but did not question Dean inten-

about their validity.

Recently,

we asked Dean

for his

memories of these conversations

with Walters, and the memcons of them that place him the cover-up in to

its

earliest stages.

Walters in Blind Ambition.

at the heart of

He had made no mention

With

us,

of talking

he remembered only one

meeting, not three, and said that Walters had pompously taken a

"Young man, you're playing with fire" approach. He characterized Walters' memories of a request from him. Dean, for bail and support money as "Horseshit; mean, it just never ever happened the way he I

portrayed

it."

Hush Money—for Hunt

209

A moment for an aside on another memcon written by Walters at about the same time

—

this

one about

his

and Helms's June

23

meeting with

Haldeman and EhrHchman. The four memcons were written starting on the afternoon of June 28, and the timing is of note. That afternoon, Walters' boss, Richard Helms, was dictating a internal one. In

had

he told his deputy that his meeting with Pat Gray

scheduled interviews with

Caswell. Gray agreed to do so.

CIA

Wagner and John be out of town for

officers Karl

Helms was going to know this

the next several days, and wanted Walters to

had

to

of his own, an

been canceled, but that he had told Gray on the telephone to

just

call off

it,

memo

in case Walters

do further business with Gray.

We

believe that the

memcon

Helms memo of June 28 and the Walters

of the same date that refers to the meeting of the twenty-third

are intimately related. In his version of the

wrote right

at the

top of his

June 23 meeting, Walters description of the four-way meeting with

Helms, himself, EhrHchman, and Haldeman that the White House men were upset about the DNC break-in and they contended that "the Democrats are trying to maximize it." ^Moreover, "the investigation was leading to a lot of important people and this could get worse. The whole affair was getting embarrassing and it was the President's wish" that Walters call Gray. This account differs from those of Haldeman and EhrHchman in one important particular: It brings in politics the one subject, as we can read from the tape transcript quoted above, that the president expressly forbade Haldeman to mention as the reason for the blocking request. Since Haldeman was very good at following precise orders, it is likely that he did so on this occasion, and that Walters' account is somev^'hat suspect. The Helms memo, written on the same afternoon .

.

.

—

as Walters', also

memo is a real CIA itself, The Walters memo can

supports this thesis, for the Helms

statement of the CIA's desire to brush over tracks that the for its

own

reasons, did not

want uncovered.

then be seen as an attempt to use the cover of a White House "political" request to

The

do what was

Walters

in the files

in the

memcon was

CIA's

interest

anyway.

designed to cover the CIA's rear, to

sit

awaiting a future investigation that might want to examine

some documentary evidence. Walters had to have realized after speaking with John Dean that the CIA would sooner or later be dragged into any inquiry on Watergate, and despite official CIA denials, the Agency's fingerprints were all over the people involved in the Watergate burglary the Cubans and Hunt and McCord had all worked for the Agency. Martinez was still on the payroll, and Hunt worked for the

—

GOLDEN BOY

210

Mullen Company, a known CIA front. There were many reasons the CIA would have wanted to keep such ties quiet. As Jim Hougan first noted in his 1984 book Secret Agenda, the CIA traces surrounding Watergate are intriguing. Unraveling the mystery of these traces as well as the questions raised by the behavior of McCord, who seemed to be running a totally separate agenda from those of Liddy and Hunt during the break-ins, is best left to future historians; these questions do not impact on the story we tell, to which we now return.

On

June 28, when

Walters) that the

it

CIA

became

clear to

Dean

(after three rebuffs

by

wasn't going to pay bail and salaries to anyone,

Knowing that Herb Kalmbach had access to some old campaign money. Dean met with John Ehrlichman at 2:10 P.M. on the twenty-eighth and used Mitchell's name a third time. On this go-round, the "idea thief" married the misuse of Mitchell's name to a notion suggested by Walters' Cuban connection reference during their June 28 meeting. Dean told Ehrlichman that Mitchell counseled that Dean should contact the president's personal attorney to help set up a defense fund for the Cuban burglars. Hearing the magic name of he tried

a different source.

Mitchell attached to the proposal, Ehrlichman okayed the idea, and

Haldeman, who said Dean could indeed call was made at 3:00 p.m., and was a demand that in Washington the very next day. He even told Kalmbach to call Ulasewicz and have him in town, too, and ready for action. Kalmbach did as requested, made the call and hopped the redeye for the capital.

Dean then

trotted

Kalmbach. That Herb meet him

it

to

call

In Dean's testimony to the Senate committee,

he described an

important meeting he said he'd attended on that same day of the twenty-eighth, at which Mitchell supposedly approved the use of to raise money and asked Dean to get similar approvals from Ehrlichman and Haldeman. In Dean's recollection, Mardian and LaRue were also at the meeting, but Mitchell pulled Dean aside to whisper directly in his ear that Ehrlichman in particular should "be very interested and anxious to accommodate" the burglars because of the Cubans' past involvement with the Dr. Eielding break-in. This supposed meeting with Mitchell was a complete fabrication. There was never any whispering in the ear, for Mitchell's logs and a newspaper article reveal that he was in New York that day, trying to deal with his disintegrating wife, who accompanied him back on the plane, which arrived in Washington at 5:30 that evening. In fact, as the Washington Post story of June 29 revealed, Mitchell had been away from

Kalmbach

in

Hush Money— or Hunt

211

^f

the capital for three days. In that article, reporter

recounts that she spoke to various

them

members of

Dorothy McCardle CRP and quoted

the

and Martha had been in her eighth-floor Country Club in Rye, New York, for the past two days, "talking over their problems." xMcCardle quoted a committee official who said that "Various doctors were called in to try to help Mrs. Mitchell. Her husband has been trying to get help for her." as saying that Mitchell

suite at the Westchester

.

.

.

know

Mitchell himself did not

at

the time he testified before the

Senate committee that this newspaper story would have helped him

deny Dean's accusations, or along with his log.

And

he would have provided

else

it

as evidence,

the committee never sought verification for

Mitchell's version of events, because they were intent

on believing John

Dean. In Dean's testimony, June 28 was a crucial and very long day talk

—the

with Walters, the (fabricated) meeting with Mitchell, and so on.

Dean was walked

in

in.

Ehrlichman's office

As

Howard Hunt's

safe

FBI, and another

evening

week

earlier

when Pat Gray Dean had had

opened. Dean and Fred Fielding had divided the

material into three piles, one of

address book

at 6:30 in the

the reader will recall, a

which Dean had handed over

to the

—containing the Hermes notebooks and the pop-up

— he had placed

in his safe.

One

pile

remained.

It

con-

and Dean had it at this meeting. According to Dean, when he'd told Ehrlichman about this material, Ehrlichman had told him to "deep six" it. Pat Gray agreed that there had been a meeting in the Ehrlichman office that evening, and he testified that during it, Ehrlichman told him, "John has something that he wants to turn over to you." It was two legal-sized folders containing what Dean described to Gray as sisted of

two

"sensitive

files,

and

classified

papers of a political nature" on which

Hunt

had worked, and which had nothing to do with Watergate. Gray asked these should become part of the FBI's Watergate file, and Dean responded that he wanted to be able to say that he'd turned them over if

to the

FBI, but asked Gray to keep them away from the others because

they were "political dynamite" and "clearly should not see the light of day."

It is

me

As Gray

testified,

true that neither to destroy the

many months

later,

Mr. Ehrlichman nor Mr. Dean expressly instructed

files.

But there was, and

destruction was intended.

.

.

.

The

is,

and tone of their remarks was that these two and

I

no doubt

in

my mind

that

clear implication of the substance files

were to be destroyed

interpreted this to be an order from the counsel to the President

GOLDEN BOY

212

of the United States issued in the presence of one of the two top assistants to the President of the

Gray took the

United States.

home, stashed them under

his clean shirts, and found various other places to keep them. He did not immediately destroy them, though he intended to do so and eventually did burn them; we shall see in a later chapter how these files, and Gray's acceptance of them, would be brought to the fore again by John Dean at a time when he desperately needed to distract prosecutors from his own trail. And the most important papers from Hunt's safe the Hermes notebooks that contained Hunt's chronology of the events and people involved in the two break-ins which Dean did not give to the FBI or to Gray, remained in Dean's possession, carefully hidden under files

—

—

the president's estate plan.

The long day of June 28, 1972, had drawn to a close for John Dean. There remained a last set of men to be tricked in order for Dean's payment scheme to be established: lawyer Herb Kalmbach and gumshoe Tony Ulasewicz. In using these two men. Dean relied on his few remaining assets. He had used them in his original intelligence operation. They already knew him, believed him to be acting for the president, and were generally willing to go along with his requests for speed and secrecy. Dean was getting to like park benches these days, and on June 29 he met Kalmbach on one in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, and advised him of a "very important assignment," namely that "We would like to have you raise funds" for the burglars. Dean told Kalmbach that he wanted him to use Ulasewicz for the deliveries of the money, so that this could all be kept away from the door of the White House.

Kalmbach

called

and asked him

CRP

Maurice Stans,

to bring

it

charge of that old money,

headquarters. Stans brought the cash over himself and asked no

questions about

its

After Stans

disposition.

Ulasewicz to come to Washington. next day,

Upon

left,

Kalmbach

in cash, plus "a yard," that

was through Kalmbach that

I

learned, for the

first

is,

at the Democratic National

who

Kalmbach explained

hadn't yet been arrested. his wife

were exerting

a lot

a

a

laundry

$100

bill.

time, that others

were involved in the burglary

Hunt and

called

Ulasewicz's arrival on the

Kalmbach handed him what Tony remembered was

bag that contained $75,000 As Ulasewicz later wrote, It

who had

over to the Statler-Hilton Hotel from the

that a

of pressure to

Committee

man

nanicd

come up with

Hush Money—for Hunt enough money

to cover the bail, attorneys' fees,

and

213

living expenses for

the Watergate burglars and their families.

No

other names were told to Ulasewicz by

—no Gordon

Kalmbach

Liddy, no James McCord, no Barker, Martinez, or any of the other men from Miami, only Hunt. Dean later testified that Kalmbach had suggested the use of Ulasewicz as a bag man, but both Kalmbach and

That day in the hotel, Kalmbach had checked Dean's request with Ehrlichman, who had said that in paying money for the burglars' defense, "the White House was responding to a moral obligation." Clearly, the idea-chief was at work again, using Ehrlichman's moral willingness to pay support money for small fish caught in a net, and Ulasewicz said

it

was Dean's

told the querulous

Tony

idea.

that he

turning that sentiment into a way to get silence

money

to the

man

Dean had, in a panic, already tried and failed to get out of the country, Howard Hunt. The moral tone of the payments didn't make Tony any better about the possibility of this operation being it seems to have sanctified it enough in his mind so that he agreed to go ahead. Kalmbach and Ulasewicz used code names: Mitchell was "the pipe," Hunt was "the writer," and the entire code had to do with "players" following the "script." There were no code names for Liddy, McCord, or the Cubans, because no payments were destined for them, though Ulasewicz didn't yet know that. Prospective payees would easily understand the code, Ulasewicz was told. He took the money home to New York and waited for instruction on where, when, and to whom to deliver it. As any attorney knew, whoever made the payoff decisions determining to whom Ulasewicz should deliver silence money, and in what amounts could be violating the federal criminal statute of obstruction of justice. Ulasewicz states that he received his instructions from Kalmbach, and Kalmbach tells us that he received his instructions from John Dean, the first one on June 29. When Dean later testified, he kept an eye on that obstruction of justice statute and constructed his version of the meeting with Kalmbach in Lafayette Park so he could avoid being charged with it. He said that after Kalmbach had obtained the funds for the payoff, Kalmbach visited Dean in the EOB accompanied by Fred LaRue, so that Dean could give them the details of who was to get how much. "I recall that such a meeting did occur in my office," Dean testified, "but I was on and off the telephone while LaRue and Kalmbach were going over the figures and I have absolutely no recollection of the details of their discussion. ... I have no further knowledge of how or when or to Ulasewicz

feel

contained for very long, but

—

—

— GOLDEN BOY

214

whom

Kalmbach was quite

delivery was made." But

clear to us that

he

received instructions from Dean. Moreover, Watergate committee re-

cords show that of the $219,000 in

$154,000 went

to

Hunt

money disbursed by Ulasewicz, more

or his wife, and $25,000

Hunt was one

lawyer, William C. Bittman.

to Hunt's

of the few people

who

could testify to Dean's involvement prior to the break-ins, the only

person

who knew

Dean had cut Liddy out of knowledge of the and knew that Dean was responsible for the order

that

break-ins' real target

to target the Olivers/Wfells/Governors' area instead of O'Brien's office.

Hunt

knew of Dean's continuing involvement

also

in post-break-in

acts.

On

Friday, June 30, John Mitchell was summoned to a private lunch with the president. He had very little inkling as to what it would be about, but he knew that his difficulties with his wife Martha had been

spread

all

over the newspapers.

That family

situation

became the overt

text of the president's

conversation at the luncheon. But there was an unstated subtext, and it

had to do with Nixon's

beliefs

as

to Mitchell's

Watergate. Taking his information from Haldeman,

Dean, Nixon had come around to the

belief that Mitchell

tioned the break-in. That belief had been bolstered to Mitchell of the suggestion that the

which, we

now know, was

been informed of

a third

payment of support money

a lie

involvement in

who had

CIA

by the

lie

from

had sancattribution

be used to stop the FBI

planted by Dean. Nixon

Dean

it

may

also have

—that Mitchell

to the burglars. In

had approved the any event, believing that

Mitchell had a role in the break-in and understanding that the Water-

would soon lead to the CRP employee Liddy, Nixon wanted put distance between himself and the head of the reelection commit-

gate to

trail

tee.

Citing Mitchell's family situation, Nixon asked

head of the

CRP

but to continue on in

him

to resign as

a private capacity as the leader

by this suggestion, and had had no intention of resigning when he had entered the White House for lunch, but felt he had to bow to his chief's wishes in this matter.

of the campaign. Mitchell was taken aback

Shortly, he resigned.

the cover-up claim as

Dean had

Thus

did Dean's tricking of the president into

its first

palpable victim the

man whose name

so often invoked without permission, John Mitchell.

:

14

DAMAGE CONTROL ACTION OFFICER

IN

Blind Ambition, John

Dean

out succinctly his version of the

sets

cover-up: role in the cover-up as a fact-finder and worked my way up man, and finally to desk officer. At the outset, I sensed no personal danger from what I was doing. In fact, I took considerable satisfaction from knowing I had no criminal liability, and I consistently sought to keep it that way. I wanted to preserve my function as an "agent" of my superiors, taking no initiatives, always acting on I

began

my

to idea

orders. ...

I

sustained the image of mvself as a "counsel" rather than as

an active participant for as long as finally vanished.

I

was too central

the

—containing

hush money

a figure,

the Justice

line into criminal culpability.

is

and there was too

Department

to the defendants.

This mea culpa

could, but the line blurred and

cover-up proceeded speedily along

activity required as the

themes

I

.

.

I

am

still

I

crossed the

.

strong psychologically,

relationship to the truth.

when

hasty

two main

and paying

investigation,

not sure

much

its

Dean had crossed 215

but bears very

little

the line between legitimate

GOLDEN BOY

216

payment of hush

actions and criminal culpability long before the

money to the Hunts. Gordon Liddy had

spilled the beans to

what Liddy

Dean

after

Dean agreed

on calling his "damage control action officer." As the summer of 1972 wore on, John Dean became just that, and more. He orchestrated the cover-up that he had already set in motion and sold it (on the supposed basis that it was John Mitchell's idea) to Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Nixon, the FBI, the CIA, and nearly every other participant in the obstruction of justice. He was able to do so because his own expansion into a power vacuum and the reluctance that he was

insisted

of superiors to get involved superbly situated

him

for the task. For

Ehrlichman and Haldeman accepted him as the White House point man on Watergate, even encouraged him to take on the work, and allowed Dean to deal directly with Walters and Gray. How Dean appeared to many different people depended on where they were on the spectrum of involvement in the Watergate affair and in earlier, clandestine matters undertaken on behalf of the White instance,

House. To the

men who knew

prior to the break-ins.

of his deep involvement in Watergate

Dean was

a co-conspirator

who had

apparently

been charged by the president with the responsibility of keeping their

own

lb Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Dean was a subordinate working aggressively on their behalf to contain the law enforcement investigation by restricting it to the burglars only, and therefore to prevent the investigation from reaching the White House; they knew, for instance, that Dean was acting to conceal the HuntLiddy activities such as the break-in to Dr. Fielding's office. To President Nixon and to John Mitchell, Dean was a bright young man throwing his energy into keeping the scandal from lapping at their doors. To the law enforcement community principally the prosecutors and Pat Gray of the FBI Dean was the president's counsel, a man who appeared to have had no involvement in the break-in, and who was charged with looking after the president's interests. Dean must have been grateful to be at the center of everything and to be regarded by the others in these benevolent ways, for he had a great deal to hide. To conceal what he had done, in the summer and fall of 1972 Dean spent his days arranging hush money payments to the Hunts, keeping himself apprised of and in fact influencing the FBI investigations, coaching witnesses to the grand jury, and staying abreast of the developments in the various criminal and civil cases being brought as a result of the Watergate break-in. We are going to examine each of these tasks separately, but want the reader to recognize that participation minimized,

—

—

Damage Control Action Officer

217

thev were being pursued simultaneously during the several months

Day of November 1972. Tony Ulasewicz's efforts to deliver money to people were a comedy of errors. Neither Douglas Caddy, the initial lawyer for the burglars, nor Paul O'Brien, CRP's lawyer, would take any of the money they didn't want to be a part of the "script" and Tony was only able to make one $25,000 payment to Hunt's attorney, William prior to Election

At

first,

—

—

C. Bittman, before he, too, refused to take any further part in the payoffs.

The proposed drops

brown paper

involved lockers in transportation centers,

bags, staged rendezvous and fallback strategies, and a

whole array of devices true identity of the

to avoid having the person being paid learn the

money

carrier.

Ulasewicz made so

many

telephone

from public phone booths that he needed a hefty supply of nickels and dimes, so, as he later wrote, "To save my pants, avoid heavy bulging pockets, and an increasing dose of irritation, I bought myself a busman's money changer and hooked it on my belt." His deliveries hit their stride only after Kalmbach (acting on instructions from Dean) connected T)ny to the "writer's wife," Dorothy Hunt. Dean had a special reason to take care of Hunt, since Hunt had information on Dean's role in the DNC break-ins. To neutralize Hunt, Dean had already emptied Hunt's White House safe, given some of the sensitive files in it to Pat Gray, telling him that the files "clearly should not see the light of day," and had retained and concealed the Hermes notebooks that could link him to Hunt. In the summer and fall of 1972, the deliveries to Dorothy Hunt went far beyond the money T)ny had originally been given for the purpose of supplying the burglars' needs, and so Ulasewicz had to meet Kalmbach three more times to get more cash: $40,000 passed into

calls

Tony's care at the Regency Hotel in

New

York, $28,900 at the Statler-

Hilton in Washington, and $75,000 at the Airporter Motel near the in California. Mrs. Hunt told Tony that they had to get some money to Gordon Liddy, but "the way she spoke about him, however, made me feel that she was looking for a way to

Orange County Airport

deal

him out of the game

as quickly as she could."

Dorothy Hunt installments all in cash. These payments well as for Hunt, but the Cubans

In short order, Ulasewicz delivered to of $40,000, $43,000, $18,000

and $53,000,

were ostensibly for the Cubans as saw very little of it. Two years later, after serving his prison sentence.

Hunt admitted office that, as

to Richard Ben-Veniste of the Special Prosecutor's

Ben-Veniste later wrote, "the cash received from

CRP

We

find

and the White House was a quid pro quo for silence." interesting an

exchange that took place

at the trial

of the defendants on

!

GOLDEN BOY

218

When Hunt

the cover-up charges.

were

really blackmail,

Hunt

"What did you consider

replied, it,

was asked whether "No, sir."

his

demands

investment planning?" the cross-exam-

ining lawyer sarcastically asked. "I

considered

it,

if

attempting to get others

you

will,

who made

in the tradition of a bill collector, a prior contract to live

up

to it."

believed he had made a contract of a different sort, and had vowed to live up to it. On the twenty-eighth of June, in the CRP offices, he had taken the first action in his campaign of silence. He had refused to be interviewed by the FBI and had been summarily fired for refusing to cooperate. He arranged to go back to Poughkeepsie and work on some legal matters, but knew that sooner or later the Watergate trail would lead to him and he would be indicted and arrested. He believed he had made errors and was willing to take full responsibility for them; more importantly, he had determined never to allow the investigation to reach higher than himself. He had personally assured both Magruder and Dean that he would never talk, and made it the central point of his life to adhere to that promise. During this period between the burglary and his indictment, Liddy received a phone call suggesting that he was going to be paid for his "manuscript" in the form of money left in a locker at National Airport in Washington. Ulasewicz writes that he was insistent that money for Liddy "should go directly to him and not pass through the Hunts' hands. I did this not to keep Liddy quiet, but to keep him from getting screwed." Liddv retrieved the money from the drop site and gave it all to his lawyer. Then he had a strange conversation with the Hunts, who said that if their "principals" wanted Liddy and Hunt out of the country, the Hunts would arrange for both families to be transported to Nicaragua, where they could live like kings under the protection of Hunt's friend Somoza. Later on in the summer, still before he was indicted, Liddy received $19,000 directly from Mrs. Hunt. She later told him that it really came from herself and Howard, not from their "principals," who didn't really care about Liddy. Liddy was furious but accepted this freeze-out with a stoic shrug, and went on remaining silent. Not until many years later did Liddy learn of the huge amounts

Gordon Liddy

had been paid to Hunt as hush money. That summer of 1972 was hectic. The FBI was interviewing lots of people, and Dean managed to insert himself into this process in two ways. First, in an extraordinary move, he convinced both the FBI and various White House employees that he should sit in on the interviews because he was counsel to the the FBI was conducting of them

|

'

that

—

i

i

j

|

|

Damage Control Action Officer

219

president. Actually, had he been functioning in a correct

manner

as

counsel to the president, he would have refused to have anything to do

with those interviews, on the grounds that they might interfere with his duty to his actual client, the president. It was not to the benefit of those being interviewed or to Nixon for

Dean

in on the interon behalf of the president, which could only reflect badly on Nixon should it become known. And, according to several FBI agents. Dean did not merely sit in on the interviews; he actively influenced them, always ready and eager to demonstrate his authority. Dean's arrogance and abrasiveness

to

sit

views, for his presence showed prejudicial conduct

were sore spots for the agents, who complained among themselves of the counsel's involvement in and knowledge of an FBI matter. During the interviews, Dean would constantly interject himself, often chiding the agent for pursuing a "fishing expedition" with the witness, or abruptly terminating the interview with a wave of his hand, announcing "Time's up." One agent who met with Dean "more than a dozen times" during such interviews told us that "each time I wanted to punch him in the face." Sitting in on the interviews was solely of benefit to Dean,

who

did so in order to learn what people in the White

House might

have to say that could be dangerous or helpful to him, and, by his very presence, to coerce possible witnesses into silence.

Second, Dean convinced Pat Gray that he. Dean, ought to receive all the FBI's raw investigative reports on the Watergate matter.

copies of

When

he requested these reports. Dean did not

previously requested

tell

them from Kleindienst and

Gray

that he

Petersen,

who

had had

turned him down. In Hoover's time, as a matter of policy, the FBI always refused to give out such things as the 302s and the

because they contained undigested material, some of

it

airtels,

only allegations

were often disproved by further investigative work. The only FBI materials usually let out of the house were summary-type reports in which field investigations were at least weighed and put into context. Gray acquiesced in the demand for the raw data because he believed Dean to be acting for the president, who, as chief executive, had the right to any documents produced by an executive branch department. The president didn't want these raw reports and would have had little use for them; but they were of great benefit to Dean because they allowed him to learn what the investigators knew almost as soon as they did, so he could take actions to counter or head off the FBI's excursions into territory that might be dangerous to him. Dean began receiving FBI reports from Gray in late June 1972. None of the White House tapes and no written record of the Nixon White House shows that Dean reported any of the substance of the

that

GOLDEN BOY

220

through was information he kept to himself, though in witness interviews, we were told, Dean would openly read copies of the 302s and "remind" the FBI agent conducting the interview about relevant material contained in the reports. For the FBI to give raw files to Dean was tantamount to giving a match to a pyromaniac. In early August, Jeb Magruder learned from the prosecutors that he was a target of the grand jury probe, Magruder had said very little to the FBI or to the grand jury in his one brief appearance, but was worried about what could happen to him if he was asked to testify at length. During this period, he wrote in An American Life, both Mitchell and Dean gave him assurances that he wouldn't be hung out to dry. He recalled standing in his CRP office, looking out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue one hot summer afternoon, when Dean told him, "Jeb, the President is very pleased with the way you've handled things. You can be sure that if you're indicted you'll be taken care of." And, Magruder says Dean added, "executive clemency would be exercised in my behalf." Magruder was scheduled to appear a second time before the grand jury on August 16, and to see the prosecutors one day earlier, without a lawyer present. It had only just become publicly known that the burglars had been paid with money from the CRP, and Magruder, as a high campaign official, could expect rough treatment this time around. Magruder wrote that he discussed his forthcoming appearance with Mitchell Mitchell denied that but that specific coaching on it came from John Dean at the Executive Office Building on the morning investigative information to the president, either himself or

Haldeman

EhrHchman.

or

It

—

—

of the fifteenth:

I

paced nervously around the large

firing questions

on the money and Liddy's

particularly

great detail

office

how

to suggest that

I

Dean

while

sat at his

desk

me, the toughest ones he could come up with,

at

Liddy was the

CRP. We discussed in we wanted

role at

should speak of Liddy.

On

the one hand,

sort of erratic individual

who was

capable

of having planned and carried out the Watergate burglary on his

own.

.

.

On

.

the other hand,

Dean and

harsh on Liddy in any personal way,

and decide best that

to speak out instead of

morning

.

.

.

We

his

agreed that

he learn of

remaining

silent.

and the advice he gave

turned out, he had a very good

mc, and

I

lest

fix

I

.

should not be too

and become angry

it

.

.

me was

Dean was

at his

excellent.

As

it

on what the prosecutors would ask

two-hour interrogation of

me was

time well spent.

have become so inured to scenes like this arising out of the

Watergate

affair that

it is

important to pause for

a

moment and

consider

Damage Control Action Officer

221

the spectacle of a lawyer, the counsel to the president, illegally coaching a co-conspirator

on how

to perjure himself before the

grand jury, with

the "dress rehearsal" taking place in an official executive branch office.

Neither Magruder nor Dean ever considered telling the truth to the grand jury just then. Also, remark how good Dean's information was: Dean was better briefed than the prosecutors, probably from his viewing of the FBI's raw investigative files. Indeed, a frustrated agent told us that "the Watergate investigation was being run out of the White House," and that "the one man who knew everything about the investigation was John Dean. Dean knew more about the Watergate investigation than Earl Silbert." In their coaching session, Dean told Magruder that he knew Chief Prosecutor Earl Silbert personally, and that Silbert would be tough; this was the ostensible reason for Dean's coaching.

Dean's grilling of Magruder lasted two hours.

own

The

prosecutors'

questioning lasted three, and Jeb felt the tension lift after the first when he discerned that the prosecutors had begun to believe his

hour,

His actual grand jury appearance the next day was "antiMagruder concluded with relief, "apparently I had sold them our story. To do so seemed all-important at the time, for selling our story seemed crucial to the reelection of the President." It was also crucial to keeping Magruder himself out of jail, and even fabrications.

climactic," and,

more

time preparing xMagruder, for phrase that to

Dean. That's

crucial to protecting John

came

if

why Dean

spent so

much

—

Jeb "strayed off the reservation" the Nixon inner circle to mean refusing

to be used in the

adhere to the approved story of the burglary and the cover-up-^

Dean could not have remained at liberty himself. Magruder was even more astounded at Dean the day after the grand jury appearance, when Dean phoned to say that his sources reported that Jeb would not be indicted, and neither would anyone else other than the four Cubans, McCord, Liddy, and Hunt. Since those actual indictments would not be announced for another entire month. Dean's sources had to be very good indeed.

They were. As we will document later, in chronological sequence, Dean was receiving information on the grand jury proceedings from a variety of well-placed sources.

In the

two weeks following Magruder's grand jury appearance and

Dean's apparent learning of the limits of the indictments, problems for

White House began arising on several fronts even as Nixon was renominated by the Republicans at their Miami convention. Demo-

the

Representative Wright Patman, chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, ordered a staff investigation into the money-

cratic

GOLDEN BOY

222

laundering aspects of the Watergate

affair;

taking depositions in their

against the

against Bernard Barker,

civil suit

Kenneth Dahlberg

DNC began

lawyers for the

CRP;

said that

in a Florida suit

he personally gave

Maurice Stans the $25,000 check that had shown up

to

in Barker's

account; and the General Accounting Office released a report citing Stans's finance

of the

new

committee

for eleven "apparent

federal election law, involving

up

to

and possible violations" $350,000 and including

the $1 14,000 in Dahlberg and Mexican checks in Barker's account.

GAO

The

Department

referred these possible violations to the Justice

on August 28, Attorney General Richard Kleindienst promised that his department would undertake the most comprehensive investigation "since the assassination of President Kennedv." It was against this background of mounting pressure to do something about Watergate that President Nixon held a news conference on August 29, 1972, on his lawn at San Clemente, and announced that there was no need for a special prosecutor to be appointed to deal with Watergate because there were five investigations already under way. In for

investigation,

addition,

Nixon

and,

said.

Within our own

under

staff,

Mr. Dean, has conducted

a

my

direction, the counsel to the president,

complete investigation of

might involve any present members of the White House in the

government.

cates that

no one

I

leads

staff or

which

anybody

can state categorically that his investigation indi-

in the

White House

presently employed was involved

No

all

staff,

in this

no one

in this Administration,

very bizarre incident.

one was more surprised by

this statement of an ongoing John Dean reported, than he was himself. He was sitting in a motel bedroom elsewhere in San Clemente when he saw the president on television, and he reports he almost fell off the bed at the announcement. He had not done anything in the way of investigation but, rather, had worked hard to stymie the probes of all the legitimate bodies trying to learn what had happened in the Watergate affair. Dean was ecstatic that the president had mentioned his name on national television, and was, he later wrote, "basking in the glory of being publicly perceived as the man the President had turned to with a nasty problem like Watergate." On a more practical level. Dean should well have been happy with

investigation,

Nixon's characterization of his work, for actions.

It

man who

announced

it

helped Dean's desperate

to his co-conspirators that

Dean was

actually the

was, indeed, running the cover-up for the president;

now

Damage Control Action Officer

223

such people as Strachan, Magruder, Liddy, and Hunt would be even

more

inclined to take direction

said to

many

from Dean. The announcement

others outside the conspiratorial circle that

ously had the president's ear, and that

command from

when Dean

Dean

spoke,

it

also

obvi-

was

a

the commander-in-chief.

On

August 29, the dav of the news conference at which Nixon said that Dean had been investigating Watergate, Phil Bailley was answering to a second indictment returned by a second Washington grand jury looking into his affairs. This was when Bailley's second case number, 1718-72, was begun, and the first indictment was superseded. The first entry on the docket sheet of case number 1718-72 soon read that on August 29 Baillev had been arraigned and pleaded not guilty, and that "all pending motions and all orders physically transferred from Cr 1 190-72 to this case." The new docket sheet made no reference to any of the events that had occurred prior to the second" August 29 arraignment, including the June 15 order committing Bailley. In addition, the new docket sheet stated that all pending motions and orders had been file into the new file. This documents from the prior case file could in fact be found in the new case file, and there would therefore be no reason for anyone to request to examine the prior file. In fact. Judge Richey's order committing Bailley was not transferred into the new file and could not be discovered from that file or the new docket sheet; that business had now effectively been hidden from the sight of anyone who did not already know what had happened in the older, first case. (The first case file was retrieved during the preparation

"physically transferred" from the prior

docket entry suggested that

all

of this book.) In the interim between the old case and the new, Bailley's attorneys

had been in court arguing vigorously to quash Judge Richey's order committing Bailley to St. Elizabeth's or, at the very least, to hold the

—

order in abeyance pending the outcome of Bailley's ongoing outpatient

examinations. Bailley's attorneys had secured the services of a psychiatrist

and

a

outpatient. Bailley

psychologist In addition,

was currendy

who were

prepared to examine Bailley as an

counsel had informed Judge Richey that

a patient

of Dr. Harold Kaufman, a supervising

Washington who was also a professor Georgetown University Law School, where he taught a course in law and psychiatry. Kaufman, the court was told, had "indicated and there is [Bailley] does not act out hostility toward the public no danger presently to the community." Despite these arguments, on

psychiatrist in private practice in

of

.

.

.

— GOLDEN BOY

224

June 30 Richev denied Bailley's motion to quash his commitment order and denied counsel's request to hold the order in abeyance. Bailley's attorneys then filed a "motion to suppress" that argued that the original FBI search was invalid and that it and its fruits

— should be thrown out of the

Bailley's address books, photos, et cetera case.

The

basis for this

argument was that the

affidavit

had stated that home and

the photos and address books had last been seen in Bailley's

apartment seven months before the search; normally, being

magis-

warrant for items described

trate considering the issuance of a search

as

a federal

must consider the question of "staleness whether too much time has elapsed between

at a certain location

of information," that

is,

the date of the viewing of those items described in the warrant's

accompanying affidavit, and the date of the warrant. If a suppression hearing was held to resolve Bailley's suppression motion, and if the motion was addressed properly and granted and there were good grounds to grant it on the basis of the Fourth Amendment's provision it could have blown the against unreasonable searches and seizures

—

—

government's case right out of the water. As important,

all

of the seized

evidence, including Bailley's address books, would have been intro-

duced

into the public record during the suppression hearing.

Faced with this motion to suppress brought to the court's attention

by

on August

Bailley's attorneys

29,

the motions for hearings or to set a

I

am

date.

He

said,

not going to set any motions at this time until

psychiatric reports.

such

Richey refused to even schedule

trial

as those

I

I

am

told

you

I

would give

suppression motion, until such time as

leave to I

have received the

I

not going to set any motions

down

file

for a hearing

today, there

is

a

have had the benefit of your

psychiatric reports.

And

so the suppression motion was itself suppressed. Today,

no

one can find that original search warrant, or the government's written answer to

Bailley's

pletely vanished

motion to suppress.

from the

Bailley matter maintained

These documents have com-

available court

files.

The

by the U.S. Attorney's

entire

office

is

file

of the

also missing

and cannot be located.

A

week

after this

second arraignment, Bailley entered

St.

Eliza-

and began two weeks of exposure to the horrors of mass psychiatric treatment in an understaffed and overpopulated govern-

beth's

ment mental

hospital.

Damage Control Action Officer

225

On

September 15, the indictments in the Watergate burglary were announced. Hunt, Liddy, McCord, Martinez, Sturgis, Barker, and Gonzalez were charged with eight counts that included tapping phones and stealing documents. The Justice Department said that these indictments had ended the investigation, since "We have absolutely no evidence to indicate that any others should be charged." Later in the day, Dean was ushered into the Oval Office and the presence of the president, who was sitting with Bob Haldeman, and they took part in the first of what would become a series of conversations about Watergate that were taped and are thus available for us to examine in detail. As Dean later testified and wrote in his book, this conversation became etched into his mind, since before this time, as a midlevel official in the White House, he had not had much personal contact with the president. Indeed, the president's

even before

Dean had

how

P: Hi,

a

are you?

chance to

sit

You had quite

first

words, uttered

down, were remarkable: a

day today, didn't you? You got

Watergate on the way, didn't you?

D:

We

H:

How

tried.

D: Ah, just as

did I

we

end up?

it all

think

we can

expect.

.

.

say "well" at this point.

how

After an exchange about this

The

press

is

plaving

it

.

well Clark

MacGregor was handling to a bug

—he was the new CRP chairman—the conversation turned

had recently been found on Spencer Oliver's telephone, nearly three months after the break-in. This was news to the president. that

P:

What bug?

.

D: Absolutely place after that

.

.

D: P:

What I

it

was

left

it

was not

there.

the hell do you think was involved?

think

DNC was planted.

You think

over from the other time?

The Bureau has checked and re-checked the whole night. The man had specifically checked and re-checked

not.

the telephone and P:

You don't think

they did it?

D: Uh-huh. P: (Expletive deleted)

GOLDEN BOY

226

Dean's know ledge of \\ hat the FBI had found two days earHer on 1 3 was exceedingly accurate, indicating he was current on move. Dean even knew the P BI's every and told the president what the FBI would do next try to trace the bug through its original manufacturer. As the reader will recall, sweeps in the aftermath of the burglary

September

—

(and even one conducted a day or two before

What had now been that

it)

had found no bugs.

discovered was an ancient bug on Oliver's phone

had either been missed

as a joke or to shore

in those

sweeps, or lately planted, either

up the Democrats'

which could have

civil suit,

floundered on the basis that no in-place bugs had been located

at

the

DNC

and therefore there might never have been any actual bugging. Prosecutor Silbert and the FBI were at odds over this late find, for, as we have noted in an earlier chapter, Silbert was then pursuing the path of trying to prove that the bugging had been done to record sexual information and with an intent to use that information for blackmail. Dean next distracted the president by reminding him that Barry Goldwater had recently said in public that everybody bugs everybody else. Nixon agreed, offering the information that he had been bugged in 1962 and 1968, and his inner circle had considered using the fact that President Johnson bugged people as a way of deflecting heat from Watergate. After more banter about this, the president returned to the main subject, telling Dean, "We want to get to the bottom of it. If anybody is guilty over here we want to know." The president was specifically asking if anyone in the White House other than those already indicted was connected to the burglary, and Dean deflected the question by turning the discussion to some of the collateral cases associated with Watergate, in particular the Democrats' civil suit and a libel suit against Stans by Larry O'Brien. D: \bu might be interested libel action

was assigned

to

in

some of the

allocations

we

The

got.

Stans

Judge Richey.

P: (Kxplctive deleted)

D: Well, now, that

is

good and bad. Judge Richey

one of the (inaudible) on the bench, that fairly

candid

in

is

is

not

dealing with people about the question.

sc\eral entrees off the

bench

—one

known

considered by me.

to Kleindicnst

He

and one

to be

He

is

made Roemer

has

to

McPhee [by then counsel to the Republican National Committee] to keep Roemer abreast of what his thinking is. le told Roemer he thought Maury [Stans] ought to file a [counter] lilx'l action. I

So Dean was

telling

Nixon

that

Judge Richev was having

ex parte

conversations with the attorney general and a lawyer in a major case

Damage Control Action Officer

227

CRP. Ex parte conversations, should they become known, are highly improper and could result in the overturning of verdicts. How could Dean have known about these conversations? McPhee, or someone in McPhee's office, is a possibilty, but Dean seemed to have a source in Richey's chambers, as can be discerned from what he next against the

told the president at

—that Richey had halted depositions

the request of Earl Silbert, thus enabling Stans to

and also

effectively delaying the

Some

Democrats'

in the civil case

file

a countersuit

suit until after the

Novem-

become known for another week, so they must have been told to Dean by Richey or someone close to his court who knew Richey's thinking. Later on in the conversation, Dean predicted with accuracy what actions Richey would take the following week in another case, down to legal grounds Richey would cite for his decision, a decision quite favorable to the ber election.

of these decisions would not

Republicans.

We Richey

have learned of at least two other instances in which Judge initiated ex parte conversations with lawyers representing Re-

publican Party interests, conversations that had to do with ascertaining

how

the Republican Party wished

him

to rule in a particular case.

have had confirmation on one of these from John Mitchell and

Mardian; and on the other from an attorney

who knew

We Bob

about the

conversation.

At this point in the forty-minute conversation, Nixon took a call from John Mitchell and joked with his old friend, saying "Get a good night's sleep, and don't bug anybody without asking me? O.K.?" Having sent Mitchell into exile, the president could now afford emo-

him about it. As Nixon hung up the phone. Dean came to his summary point: "Three months ago I would have had trouble predicting there would

tionally to kid

be a day

when

this

four days from

crashing

down

would be forgotten, but

now

I

think

I

[date of the election] nothing

can say that is

fifty-

going to come

to our surprise."

Nixon complimented Dean on being "skillful" in putting his fingers in the leaks, and it was obvious to everyone in the room that this meeting was of the sort that the Nixon White House labeled a stroking session. But Dean was stroking Nixon, too. He took the occasion to steer Nixon through a laundry list of other political matters on which he had been acting, including that he was putting together "notes on a lot of people who are emerging as less than our friends." This was a hot button of Nixon's that Dean seemed to know, and he was rewarded when Nixon instantly escalated the idea to a command to Haldeman that "the most comprehensive notes" of this sort be kept, and a

GOLDEN BOY

228

how these people would suffer in Nixon's second when he began to use the full powers of the presidency against them. "What an exciting prospect," echoed Nixon's new acolyte. There was some discussion of how to head off Wright Patman's discussion about

term,

investigation through the use of various

congressmen

who were

as-

sumed to be disposed toward doing what Nixon asked. Dean seemed to be up to date on what all of them were doing and how they could be persuaded to go along. The meeting was almost over

when Dean brought up something left field. He told the

must have thought came from

that the president

Henry Rothblatt, symposium that had to do with some of the quite a character," Dean identified Rothblatt

president that he had seen the Cubans' attorney,

laughing

of a

at the start

"He

overlapping cases.

is

and then went on to

for the president,

D: He [Rothblatt] has been getting

members

D: Well, he

Nixon,

into the sex life of

some of the

DNC.

of the

Why? What

P:

tell

the justification?

is

working on the entrapment theory, that they [the

is

Democrats] were hiding something, that they had secret information of theirs to hide. ... It

It

was not

"caught"

it.

a

a

is

way-out theory that no one had caught.

way-out theory, nor was

it

true that no one had

Shortly after the indictment, Rothblatt told Peter Maroulis,

Liddy's attorney, that "the Democrats were using the remark pass, not thinking that

call girls,"

Maroulis

was related to the break-in. Moreover, as Dean had to know. Earl Silbert was then pursuing the sexual-blackmail angle based on Alfred Baldwin's relevations, and was trying to get enough evidence to show that the burglary had been committed to obtain information for sexual blackmail. But since neither Nixon nor Haldeman had even a glimmer of what Dean might be let

referring to, they let

When

it

it

pass.

the meeting was over,

Nixon

reflected briefly in his diary

young counsel:

his

I

had

him.

a I

good

talk

later told

White House,

with John Dean and was enormously impressed with

Haldeman, who

that he

we needed

to clean

to put the

IRS and the

should be on.

said that

had the kind of

house

steel

he brought him into the

and

reallv

mean

after the election in various

Justice

instinct that

departments and

Department on the kind of

basis that

it

on

Damage Control Action Officer

On

September

had

a total of

229

he had been committed to St. Elizabeth's mental hospital, Phil Bailley emerged. He had not stayed the full sixty days to which Judge Richey had consigned him, but he had been suDJect to two weeks of horror. In those fifteen days he had 21, fifteen days after

only forty-five minutes of psychiatric consultation.

time was spent confined to

rest of his

who had been

criminals

wards used

judged too insane for prison.

Elizabeth's he was a broken and frightened

left St.

his experiences

—but

a

man

certified

The

to contain psychotic

When

Bailley

man, haunted by

by the superintendent of the

institution as having "sufficient present ability to consult

with his

counsel with a reasonable degree of rational understanding and has a rational as well as a factual understanding of the proceedings against

him."

brought him into Richey's court on September 22. There, the government had no objection to his being continued on personal recognizance bond pending trial. But before a trial date was Bailley's attorneys

Richey raised the possibility of

set,

some

would

I

The

sort of plea bargain.

lines?

.

when

I

thing.

.

.

.

.

Well, gentlemen,

say

if

there

is

judge said

it

is

a

possibility of

Have you had any discussion along these

.

I

think

it is

not over everybody's head that

a possibility of a disposition this

The government must

defense has thought about

is,

several times:

whether or not there

also inquire as to

disposition in this case?

a "disposition" in the case, that

it

have thought about I

am

sure.

I

know

it

would be

a

good

and moreover, the

that

you [government

attorney] and Mr. Palmer [Bailley's second attorney] are both able

lawyers and Mr. Bailley himself If

there

is

any way

is

no neophyte

to resolve this

I

think

it

in this field, either.

would be

.

.

.

in everyone's

interest.

In

whose

interest?

Surely not in Bailley's, but possibly in the

interest of certain outside parties. For at a trial or before

it

Bailley's

would certainly have pushed the suppression motion, demanded to see the seized evidence and to make it part of the public record, inquired if it had ever been out of the prosecution's hands, and demanded the identity of the five unnamed women ("victims") in the indictment. Rudy would then have been required to tell of his visit to the Executive Office Building and of John Dean's interest in and copying of Bailley's address book. Dean's interest in that address book would have piqued the press's interest, too. At trial, the defense would

attorneys

— GOLDEN BOY

230

Dean

have called

ensued

for

—and we can imagine what chaos would then have

Dean.

In the status conference of September 29, the judge again pushed to have the case resolved without trial, even going so far as to advise

one of the prosecutors to confer "with his superiors, Mr. Collins in particular, this morning, before you leave the courthouse." Returning to the theme he had struck at the earlier hearing, early in this one Richey said, "You know, if there is any way that a case like this can be resolved in the interests of everyone, I think it ought to be done." Palmer responded that it was premature to discuss the guilty plea while the motion to suppress was pending. Since the government's opposition to that motion to suppress wasn't in the file jacket, Richey scheduled a hearing on it for October 2, but again urged the lawyers to explore a plea bargain that day, September 29, in order to avoid "a lot of unnecessary legalistics." Confer they did. Bailley, emotionally exhausted, had decided not to fight anymore. When the parties reconvened that afternoon of September 29, Palmer announced to the court that Bailley had agreed to plead guilty to Count 1 1 of the indictment. Count 1 1 of the original indictment carried a penalty of two years, while most of the other charges carried a five-year penalty. It made sense to plead to the two-year

—

Count

1 1

charge of the original indict-

—

thought this was what ment, and he was doing. However, in the second series of indictments the sequence had been rearranged, so that the original Count 1 1 had become perhaps Bailley

Count

14,

and

his attorney

and the present Count

1 1

bore

a five-year charge,

into the record the full basis for that charge to

Rudy

read

which Bailley pleaded D.C. lawyer named

that he'd transported a female into the offices of a

Levine so that she could have sex with that lawyer for a fee of twentyfive dollars.

As required

in court, the precise

with the underlying basis for

it,

that

woman. The prosecutors were asked

charge was read to Bailley along is,

that

it

involved Levine and the

to provide a factual basis for the

charge and said the basis was Levine's testimony

As

it

would turn out,

charge, there wasn't

if

at

the

first

grand jury.

there was the required factual basis for this

much

of one.

After entering a guiltv plea, Bailley was allowed to remain on bond

At the October 25 sentencing, Bailley 's lawyer made a motion to withdraw the guilty plea based on Levine having told Bailley and his lawyer that Levine had recanted before the second grand jury the testimony that he gave the first. Rudy argued that Levine's testimony at the two grand jury appearances could be interpreted as consistent. Judge Richey read the first and second grand

for a

month,

until sentencing.

Damage Control Action officer jury transcripts quickly, and immediately

231

pronounced them

to be

was not permitted to read the tranon the grounds that grand jury testimony is secret. Later, when Bailley would pursue an appeal, his new appellate counsel would obtain the two grand jury transcripts of the Levine testimony. Appellate counsel would vigorously argue that there was a "serious conflict" between the two transcripts insofar as they dealt with the reason Levine paid Bailley twenty-five dollars. But in any event, on that day, Richey proceeded to sentence Bailley to the maximum term of five years. This was quite a harsh sentence considering that it was a first offense and that the transaction involved twenty-five dollars. Phil Bailley was taken essentially the same; the defense scripts

immediately to prison.

The

resolution of this case through a guilty plea guaranteed that

the evidence seized from Bailley's

home and

1972 would never again see the light of day.

office

And

back

way

in April of

which the from beginning to end, ensured that any attempt to discover what had happened to Bailley would be frustrated bv tricks and roadblocks. Last, Bailley's unwarranted and unnecessary commitment to St. Elizabeth's made it a virtual certainty that Bailley would be permanently discredited, and his guilty plea and sentencing ensured that he would be disbarred. the

in

case was handled,

When Tony Kalmbach

Ulasewicz had picked up a last batch of cash from Herb Airporter Motel near the Orange County airport, the

at the

two men had had a long talk. Ulasewicz advised Kalmbach that the demands of the Hunts had grown far out of proportion and had gone on too long to be continued, and that both Tony and Herb ought to get out of the game now. Kalmbach agreed, and after the indictment of the burglars they both opted out. Then, Tony reported in his book, Dean and Fred LaRue insisted that Kalmbach raise more money; Kalmbach refused, and, on September 19, 1972, Ulasewicz flew to Washington and stashed the remaining money that he did have in an airport locker and watched as LaRue came and picked it up. From then on, and still at the direction of Dean, LaRue handled disbursements to the Hunts. Though LaRue was close to Mitchell, and Mitchell had nixed paying support money to the burglars, Mitchell had by this time left Nixon's campaign altogether; so, still with CRP, LaRue looked to

—

—

House specifically John Dean for direction. There was one more item for John Dean to take care of, now that he had the confidence of the president and had assured himself and Nixon that things would not come crashing down, now that he had seen Phil Bailley and his address books consigned to oblivion, and now

the W^hite

GOLDEN BOY

232

hush money to keep Hunt and without prior hint that this might happen, Dean announced to Haldeman that he had decided to marry Maureen Biner immediately. The upper echelon White House executives were in the midst of a reelection campaign whose pavoff was less than a month away. Most loyal staffers would have put off major surgery, let alone marriage, until after November 7, but Dean was insistent on marrying what he called his "lovely California girl" on Friday, October 13, as he told Haldeman in a cute memo of October 5, routed through "The Society of Single White House Secretaries," a memo which had a place for Haldeman to indicate yea or nay. (Haldeman's only comment on the memo was the single word "Reconsider.") Dean was so much in a hurry to get married that he helped himself to $4,850 from a White House slush fund kept in his safe. He later avowed that he put his own personal check in to cover that amount, but the dating of that check has been questioned; in any event, the taking of the money indicates the rush toward matrimony.

that he had

managed

to continue the flow of

quiet. At the beginning of October,

—

With

this

marriage, of course,

Dean

effectively

made it more Dean would be

Maureen to be a witness against him, since under the law to prevent her from revealing marital confidences. And, being married to Dean, Maureen's interests would be difficult for

entitled

tied to the progress of her

ruined

if

an unmarried

committee

why

"Mo

—

husband's career

a career that

could be

Biner" explained to a jury or congressional

her nickname "Clout" appeared in Phil Bailley's ad-

what her nickname meant, or what knowledge or interest John Dean had of Heidi Rikan/Cathy Dieter. So marrying Maureen immediately was an essential career move for John Dean.

dress books, or

15

THE PRESSURE

MOUNTS

THE

Key Biscayne honeymoon of John and Maureen Dean was it began by a call from Larry Higby, Haldeman's assistant, summoning Dean back to Washington. Dean had fantasized that his conversation with the president on September 1 5 would be just the beginning of a new life among the elite who were close to the Oval Office; Maureen even believed rumors that in the second Nixon administration John would be rewarded for his work on Watergate with an ambassadorship, perhaps to France. Shortly, however, it would become apparent to Dean that his conver-

interrupted two days after

sation

with the president of September

high-wire act, the

moment when

it

15, 1972,

seemed

was the zenith of

entirely possible that

his

Dean

could prevent Watergate from ever touching him, and that from there it

was down

all

to cut short his

A month after that summit, with the summons honeymoon and come back to the White House, Dean

the way.

on a long slide into desperation and panic. Confronting him were two matters for which he had not planned. Donald Segretti's dirty tricks to disrupt the Democrats' campaigns had become known to the press, who had labeled White House appoint-

started

233

GOLDEN BOY

234

ments secretary D\\ ight Chapin the mastermind for Segretti's "campaign dirtv tricks and sabotage." This was the first time a serious charge had been traced into the White House, and the president's men were upset about it. Actually, Segretti had begun as a Haldeman operation, reporting through Chapin, but within a few months Liddy and Hunt had taken him over. At a meeting in Florida, Liddy told Segretti that Hunt would break his knees if he didn't cooperate, and Segretti agreed in effect to be taken away from Chapin and made a part of Liddy's apparatus. Since Liddy had reported to Dean, that made Segretti a Dean problem. Returning from his honeymoon. Dean quickly determined the extent of the damage Segretti could cause, met with him, taped Segretti's confession (which made no mention of Dean himself), and told the prankster to stay out of sight until after the election. Segretti did so, traversing the country by train and bus to avoid reporters who he thought might be lurking at the airports, watching for him. Dean had less success handling a second wild card. By mid-October 1972 the White House had become the target of stories by Washington Post reporters Bob Wbodward and Carl Bernstein about an unreported $350,000 fund that had been used for political purposes. Since September, the reporters had been writing about the fund and its links to the CRP, but now they were focusing on Haldeman's control of the fund. Haldeman had asked deputy presidential assistant Alexander Butterfield in April to find a place for this large amount of cash because he didn't want it in the White House during the election, at a time when people were snooping around. Butterfield contacted a friend in Virginia

who stashed the money in a safe- deposit box. The fund stories made headlines; their importance is

that they alerted

—

Watergate game

could not control. \\

hat

for

our chronicle

John Dean that there were other players

in the

confidential sources for the Post reporters, players he

The fund

Woodward and

stories

were the

Bernstein would

come

first

that used as a source

to refer to as

1 he Watergate scandal did not seem to

Deep Throat.

raise the hackles of the

American people or in any way deter the electorate on November 7, 1972, from rejecting Democratic candidate George McGovern and choosing Richard Nixon by more than 60 percent of the popular votes and 97 percent of the electoral college votes. Nixon's was a landslide of the proportions not seen in American politics since the heyday of Franklin Roosevelt. At a post-election meeting at president, istration.

Camp

David, the

Haldeman, and Fhrlichman met to plan the second adminThey believed Watergate was firmly behind them. Among

The Pressure Mounts

235

other actions the trio planned at this time was to have every appointed official

tender an undated resignation, so that they could reappoint

who were

only those people willing to

The and 1 1

do

prosecutors were having a hard time with E.

this, too,

filed a

Howard Hunt,

for John Dean to handle. motion to force the government

became something

Hunt's lawyer

,

unquestionably loyal to the president and

his bidding.

to Hunt's defense, or cause to

On

October

to turn over

be turned over, the Hermes notebooks time of his arrest. This

Hunt said had been motion deeply troubled the prosecutors, for if the Hermes notebooks could not be produced. Hunt might very well claim that evidence critical to his defense had been withheld, and the prosecution's case against Hunt might collapse. Pursuing these notebooks, in December prosecutor Earl Silbert called Bruce Kehrli, Fred Fielding, and John Dean to come in and talk in his safe at the

that

them about the disposition of the contents of Howard Hunt's safe. It was the first time that Dean had been questioned by any law enforcement agency or officer of the court and Silbert, as Dean had once told Magruder, was tough. Dean kept saying he couldn't recall what had happened to every single thing in Hunt's safe, and kept to the story that he had given it all to the FBI. After an hour of interrogation on

to

—

with no end in sight. Dean caught sight of

this subject,

person.

him

It

a familiar

was Henry Petersen; Dean put his arm around him and took which Dean made one of his most bold-faced

aside for a chat in

lies.

"Henry,

I've got to talk to

you," Dean reports that he said in the

version printed in Blind Ambition.

only thing

I

He then told why there

can figure out about

Petersen, "Listen, the are

some documents

is that not all the stuff we found was turned over directly to Some of the documents were politically very FBI agents. embarrassing, and we sent them straight to Pat Gray. If there are missing documents, he's got them." "Oh, shit!" Petersen exclaimed. "You're not serious!" "Yeah, I'm afraid so, and I don't have any idea how to handle that ." if I get called to testify. I don't really want to get on that stand. It was as smooth a performance as the one Dean had given to the president in September, and as Dean had intended, the information stunned Petersen and immediately stopped Silbert's grilling. "I heard nothing more about being called as a witness," Dean concluded of the

missing the

.

.

.

.

.

matter in his book.

Indeed, the matter then became Petersen's dilemma of what to do

GOLDEN BOY

236

about Gray, the acting director of the FBI, who Petersen had been led to beheve had evidently taken possession of potentially important evidence. Hunt's notebooks, and failed to report his ing possession of this evidence. Moreover,

initial

Dean had

Gray's silence on the matter had been going on for

or continu-

just told

six

him

that

months. While

Dean remained off the hook. So: At of impending trouble John Dean had thrown Pat Gray

Petersen explored that dilemma, the

first

sign

overboard in an attempt to save himself; before his slide was finished,

he would have to throw over many other people in his attempts to protect himself from prosecution. Even though the Hermes notebooks question had been pushed aside for the moment, Hunt himself was still a problem for Dean because he

was demanding money, more and more of it. Dean's difficulties with Hunt were made all the more acute by a plane crash on December 8, 1972, in which Dorothy Hunt was killed. (Ten thousand dollars in cash was found in her purse, but it was impossible to prove a connection between this money and the payments ordered by Dean that had been made to her by Kalmbach.) After his wife's death, Hunt was distraught, and asked Dean through his lawyer if the government could find a friendly psychiatrist who would certify Hunt as unfit to stand trial. Dean tried to get Henry Petersen to go along with this request, but could not.

The

trial

of the Watergate defendants was scheduled to begin in

January of 1973. As that date grew ever closer, Hunt and McCordtwo of the men whom Dean feared most raised increasingly loud

—

As the noises swelled in volume, him more and more exposed.

noises about having been abandoned.

Dean began

to take actions that left

For instance, he had learned that the

CIA

had given to the prose-

cutors a packet of photographs relating to the Dr. Fielding break-in,

one of which showed Gordon Liddy clearly identified

it

as the doctor's office;

he tried to induce the

CIA

photos, so that Liddy's

whose sign December of 1972,

in front of a building

now,

in

to request that Justice return the packet of

illegal actions prior to

the Watergate break-ins

would not be brought to the fore. The (>IA refused to ask for the photos back, and Dean's ham-handed attempt to obtain the photos left a paper trail with his name emblazoned on it. When Fhrlichman returned to the White House following a vacation, on January 3, 1973, Dean and Chuck (>)lson met with him to discuss Howard Hunt and the requests of Hunt's lawyer, Bittman, to] obtain clemency for Hunt. In Witness to Power, Ehrlichman described

how he handled

the situation: "I said as plainly as

could not say anything to liittman that even hinted

I

could that Colson

at

clemency.

I

said

— The Pressure Mounts

237

the President had decided that right after the burglary."

He

later

learned that Colson had gone behind his back to get Nixon's consent to talk about clemency to his old friend Hunt. (Hunt denied that he had sought clemency at all, and said that the $154,000 paid to him had all gone to his lawyers. But, as we have shown, in 1974 he acknowledged that the cash he and his wife had received was for his silence.) The day after their meeting with Colson, Dean and Ehrlichman had lunch with Attorney General Richard Kleindienst to learn what the sort of sentences the burglars would get; Kleindienst didn't know but later reported back to Dean that Judge trial hadn't even begun Sirica, whose nickname was "Maximum John," was likely to hand out

—

—

heavy sentences. This worried Dean even more.

On

two days before the trial was to begin, Gordon Liddy received a call. "Gordon, I think you'll recognize my voice," the caller said, as Liddy reported in Will. It was Dean, and Liddy did recognize the voice, even though he had not heard from Dean since June 19, 1972, at which time Dean had promised support for the burglars, support that had become hush money for Hunt. The ostensible reason behind Dean's call to Liddy now had to do with Bud Krogh, and not with Liddy's own trial. Krogh, the former Plumber and the man who had recruited Liddy for the White House, was about Saturday, January

6,

1973,

to enter confirmation hearings for a post as undersecretary of transpor-

and Liddy had been called to testify. He didn't want to testify Krogh, even though Liddy could have exonerated him from Watergate. Liddy felt that if he appeared, he'd also have to testify for many others, and Liddy had tried to reach Krogh to tell him the reason for refusing to testify. Krogh wouldn't take his call. Now here was Dean, telling Liddy that it was impossible for Krogh to talk to Liddy now, since Bud wanted to be able to say he hadn't talked to Liddy in the past year. Then Dean shifted to an entirely unexpected point: "I want tation,

for

—

you; everyone's going to be taken care of everyone. Absolutely. First, you'll receive living expenses of thirty thousand per

to assure

it

.

.

pardon within two years. Three, we'll you're sent to Danbury Prison; and fourth, your legal fees will

annum. Second, see to

.

you'll have a

be paid."

Liddy

tried to pin

Dean down

further, asking

if

—

he understood the

commutation and a pardon Dean said he did and telling Dean that legal fees were his real concern. "I want it understood there's no quid pro quo here. I'll keep quiet no matter what," Liddy concluded, and he was sure Dean knew it. But the promises Dean had made were so unusual that Liddy took a felt-tipped pen and

difference between a

GOLDEN BOY

238

wrote down the substance of the conversation on a piece of paper that he shortly gave to his lawyer, Peter Maroulis. This call reinforced Dean's belief that Liddy would remain silent, a silence Dean counted on. Liddy's steadfast refusal to talk, which Liddy imagined as an unbreakable line of defense for the president of the United States against knowledge of Watergate, was shamelessly used by John Dean to protect himself. It would not be until 1980, when the statute of limitations had expired, that Liddy would reveal that Dean had made an illegal inducement of money and a presidential pardon in order to keep Liddy quiet, even though there had been no indication that he would break. At about the same time as Dean's call to Liddy, Tony Ulasewicz received a plea from Jack Caulfield, who "once again asked me to play courier for the delivery of a message from Dean to McCord." Tony was to tell McCord, "A year is a long time, your wife and family will be taken care of, you will be rehabilitated with employment when this is all over." Tony didn't want to do the job, but Caulfield begged him, based on their long friendship and because Caulfield was on assignment in California and couldn't do it himself. The call was to be the response to a letter McCord had sent to Dean via Caulfield, that said if the White House tried to blame the CIA for Watergate, "every tree in the forest would fall." When Tony recited the message, McCord asked him if it meant that he was to plead guilty. "I told him that all I was delivering was a message, not a promise," Ulasewicz writes, "and that it was up to him to draw the inferences. But it didn't take a genius to read between the lines." The trial began. On January 12, after it had commenced, Caulfield met McCord at night at an overlook on the George Washington Parkway and offered the wire-man clemency "from the highest levels of the White House." McCord was evidently not convinced of the seriousness of this offer, for whoever made it insisted that the pair meet in a clandestine manner twice more during the course of the trial. At one of these rendezvous, Caulfield told to govern

is

that "the president's ability

Every bod v else is on track but you." Caulfield he reported back about these meetings to John Dean.

at stake.

later testified that

McCord

.

.

.

seems most probable that none of the illegal promises made by or through Caulfield or Ulasewicz were reported to his superiors and especially to the president during this period, for if they had been, they would have shown up in the discussions that involved Ehrlichman and Haldeman recorded on the White House tapes. The absence from those tapes of any report of Dean's frantic activity to ensure the silence of Hunt, Liddy, and McCord is particularly striking, It

Dean himself

The Pressure Mounts

239

and buttresses the idea that Dean made those promises entirely on his own. As the trial began, Howard Hunt pleaded guilty, and testified that to his "personal knowledge ... no higher ups" were involved in Watergate crimes. That statement was what $179,000 in payoffs made to that time had bought. It was just after Hunt's guilty plea, John Dean wrote, that he destroyed Hunt's Hermes notebooks. Hunt had sought them as evidence to clear him, and had repeatedly claimed they would reveal the names and actions of his principals in the White House. In Blind Ambition, Dean makes a joke of the destruction, saying his shredder had a hard time digesting the books and that he feared the noise might set off a delicate sensor he'd had installed. He rationalized their destruction, saying the notebooks were "no longer relevant to the trial after Hunt's guilty plea," but this is specious. Hunt's guilty plea was irrelevant to the evidentiary value of the notebooks in other, ongoing,

Watergate-related cases, or in clearing Pat

Gray of Dean's

of having secret possession of the notebooks. full

As

a lawyer.

well that destruction of evidence at any time

—obstruction of

—and that he had

was

false

charge

Dean knew

itself a

criminal

and continuing obligation to turn over this evidence to the prosecutors and to Hunt. By destroying the notebooks. Dean shredded forever any documentary evidence that could link him to Hunt and his order to go into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Dean's own account of this episode belies his claim that he had not really looked at the notebooks since he'd taken possession of them. If Dean had not read the notebooks, or had not learned from them that Hunt had chronicled Dean's role in the two break-ins, it would have

violation

justice

a distinct

been logical for Dean to have turned the notebooks over to the FBI with the other records from Dean's safe. But Dean hadn't done that, he'd kept them for a time and then destroyed them. Dean says the notebooks were under the president's estate papers but we know from Haldeman and Ehrlichman of frequent demands for those estate papers

—

second half of 1972, so Dean would have had to take them out of the safe many times, and could hardly have missed seeing the Hunt

in the

Dean made no mention at all and sweaty act" of destroying the notebooks. In fact, he never revealed his possession of the notebooks to the prosecutors who would have been most interested in them. Earl Silbert and Henry Petersen. When Dean testified before Congress one more time, in 1974 at the House Judiciary Committee hearings, he told the House that the fact of his destruction of the notebooks had simply

notebooks. In his later Senate testimony. of

what he

styles "this direct, concrete

GOLDEN BOY

240

"slipped his

mind" when he'd

testified to the Senate,

and then admitted

not only that he had destroyed the notebooks, but that he had examined their contents prior to shredding

new

them.

When

he made the disclosure

from the Special Prosecutor's it office, who had not participated in his December 1972 grilling by Silbert. And Dean waited to reveal the destruction (1) until he had cemented his deal for a light sentence, (2) until he had pleaded guilty to one count of obstructing justice, and (3) until he had allowed the Special Prosecutor's office to build criminal cases against John Mitchell and others based on Dean's own testimony. was only to a

set of lawyers, those

During the Watergate burglars trial. Hunt, Barker, Sturgis, Martinez, and Gonzalez all pleaded guilty. Alfred Baldwin got on the stand, and Silbert began to ask him whose voices he had overheard on the wiretaps and to describe the contents of the overheard conversations. This was the moment we have described earlier, when Charles Morgan, Jr., the lawyer for Spencer Oliver and the DNC, halted the proceedings with an objection. Sirica overruled the objection and momentarily suspended the trial to allow Morgan to obtain a ruling from the appeals court. In Judge Bazelon's appeals court, Baldwin's testimony was ruled inadmissible. By this ruling, Silbert was compelled to abandon the sexual blackmail motive of the burglary, and to proceed with a different tack for the burglars' motive: that the break-in target was Larry O'Brien's office. That was shaky, but it didn't matter, because the prosecution did not need to prove a motive for the burglary, only that the burglars had been caught red-handed, and that there were traceable links to their superiors. It seemed an open-and-shut

and on January 30, 1973, after deliberating only ninety minutes, the jurors found Liddy and McCord guilty. Sentencing for all the defendants, those convicted and those who had previously pleaded guilty, would come in February, Sirica announced. Also looming in February for John Dean were the formation of the Senate Watergate investigating committee under the chairmanship of Democrat Sam Ervin, and Senate Judiciary Committee hearings to confirm L. Patrick Gray as director of the FBI. Both sets of committee hearings could be dangerous to Dean, Ervin's because Dean would have to carefully control what such men as Jeb Magruder and Gordon Strachan might have to say in a public forum, and the Senate Judiciary Committee's because Gray might well be asked about Dean having case,

handed him part of the contents of Hunt's safe. On February 9, just after the Senate overwhelmingly approved the establishment of the Ervin committee, President Nixon closely ques-

I

The Pressure Mounts tioned

241

Haldeman and Ehrlichman about preparations to deal with the He wanted to know who in his administration was in

committee.

charge of readying the White House's response to this poHtical chal-

EhrHchman

it was Dean and Richard Moore, special was anyone. "Well, what do they say?" Ehrlichman remembers Nixon as asking, and that he also asked who was going to be on the committee and its staff, what the committee's rules would be and how far its subpoena powers were to extend. Ehrlichman and Haldeman didn't know. In his book, Ehrlichman recounted what happened next:

lenge.

told

presidential counsel,

For months

I'd

Watergate."

Now

him

if it

been comfortable with Nixon's injunction to "stay out of he was demanding that Bob Haldeman and

I

get into

we should spend the weekend with Moore and Dean and learn everything we could about the Senate's plans. ... We sent for Moore and Dean and spent parts of two days with them at the La Costa resort where the staff stayed when the President was at San it all

the way.

Nixon

Clemente. In that

said

series of

meetings

I

heard enough to trouble

me

deeply.

The "enough" that he heard was Dean's description of the support money payments and the things the Senate could expect to find that linked "Hunt to Colson, and Liddy to Jeb Magruder to Gordon Strachan." Of course, Dean omitted his own name and connections to the burglary and the cover-up. After the sessions, Ehrlichman re-

ported, said,

ask

Nixon wanted

to

Moore and Dean.

I

that Moore and Dean had hundred questions we'd not thought to

know everything

"and typically, he asked

a

finally said, in exasperation, that the President

ought to be talking to Dean directly." Thus was the stage set for the intimate, taped conversations held between John

series of

Oval Office

Dean and President Richard Nixon

in

February and March of 1973.

When John Dean

walked into the Oval Office at 9:12 a.m. on the morning of February 28, 1973, for his first meeting alone with the president, he brought with him quite a load of baggage. He had touched too many people and investigations, and his cover-up was beginning to come apart. Heavy sentences were expected from Judge Sirica, heavy enough to force the defendants in the burglary trial to talk in order to lessen the sentences. Hunt wanted more money, and the CRP and other sources had now been exhausted. Dean could not be certain how long such men as Magruder and Strachan would hold

GOLDEN BOY

242

up before questioning by Congress, by the prosecutors, and by lawyers for the Democrats in their civil suits. Kalmbach, Ulasewicz, and Caulfield knew of Dean's earher illegal activities and his recent, unsanctioned offers of clemency; there was the possibility they would be called to testify, as well. Nor could Dean be certain how long the prosecutors would continue to stay away from him. To successfully keep all the wolves at bay. Dean needed to gain the president's confidence.

For his part, President Nixon seems to have decided just before this

meeting to

finally deal

political liability

Having been

knew

with Watergate,

hampering

his plans for his

in politics a lot longer

far better

than they

now

that

it

had become

a

second administration.

than Haldeman or Ehrlichman, he

how much

focus would be placed

by the

public on the open, televised hearings of the Ervin-led Watergate

committee. In order to deal effectively with that committee, he had to know what they might discover about Watergate and he had been

—

told that

Dean had

all

the information.

So Nixon needed

to listen

Dean, and to assure himself of Dean's loyalty. Nixon came on strong and direct. He wanted to know what sort of line Dick Kleindienst was going to take in his dealings with senators Ervin and Baker, who were the senior members of the investigative committee, and how far Kleindienst would go in insisting that witnesses from the White House would be able to cite executive privilege as a way to avoid testifying on sensitive matters. Nixon wanted Dean to firm up Kleindienst's resolve not to make any deals on executive privilege. There was still some hope that the committee would agree to accept from the president's men only written responses to written interrogatories; Dean agreed this would be a good strategy, because "publicly you are not withholding any information and you are not carefully to

using the shield of the Presidency." Nixon referred him to the

first

and rambled a bit about how he had congressman on the Hill, even in the absence of cooperation from the FBI and Justice. "Funny, when the shoe is on the other foot how they look at things, isn't it?" Dean responded, fawning a bit and drawing the president out on the old matter. He brought up the notion, mentioned previously to Nixon by Haldeman, of having Maurice Stans as a stalking horse before another committee investigating financier Robert Vesco, to see how such a forum would deal with executive privilege questions and when Nixon said it was a good idea but didn't know where it came from, Dean acknowledged the stalking horse notion as his own suggestion. Dean busily took the president through some of the related cases chapter of his book Six

handled the Hiss case as

Crises,

a

—

The Pressure Mounts

243

and committees, lightly provoking Nixon to monologues about the press and its antipathy to him. The president's counsel lost no opportunity to mouth derogatory phrases about such well-known "enemies" of Nixon's as the press, and then, with Nixon's enemies as a theme, got around to the committee. D:

I

am

puppet is

convinced that [Sam Ervin] has shown that he

Kennedy

for

behind

this

in this

whole

whole hearing. There

Kennedy] has kept

The

fine

no doubt about

is

merely

is

a

hand of the Kennedys

and constant pressure on

his quiet

Sam Dash, who

this fellow

thing.

it.

.

.

this thing.

has been selected Counsel,

is

a

.

I

[Ted think

Kennedy

choice.

Perhaps,

Dean

offered, that notion of the fine

hand of the Kennedys

Dean reported that he'd Bobby Kennedy had had Lyndon Johnson bugged, and

could be leaked and so sabotage the hearings.

been told that

might be found within the FBI's files for the idea that the Democrats had done just as much bugging as the Republicans, and that this information could further damage the hearings. Former FBI assistant director William Sullivan was the key to this. Dean said, but, "I haven't probed Sullivan to the depths on this thing because I want to treat him at arm's length until he is safe, because he has a world of information that may be available." The president didn't understand how Sullivan knew about the bugging, and asked, "Who told what to whom again?" that support

Dean bugged

related a wild story about information that

Nixon had been

1968 having gone from Hoover to Patrick Coyne to Nelson

in

Rockefeller to Henry Kissinger, and that maybe FBI Assistant Director Mark Felt could go public with it even if there were no records. This led Nixon into a discussion of the fate of men who go public with sordid stories, such as Whittaker Chambers in the Hiss case and Dean had the president hooked. Minutes flew by on these immaterial side discussions before the president tried once more to take charge of

—

the meeting.

P:

What

is

the situation

sentencing of the seven?

D: That

more P:

Why

them

is

likely

has

to see

anyway with regard

When

likely to occur,

I

in the hell

would

is

to the situation of the

that going to occur?

say, as early as late this

week, but

sometime next week. it

been delayed so long? ...

who

will

break them down?

He

[Sirica]

is

trying to

work on

GOLDEN BOY

244

Nixon was incredulous

of thirty-year sentences for the

at the idea

weapons found on them, no injuries to anyone, and that the burglary had not succeeded. burglars, citing the facts that there had been no

P:

I

those poor guys in

feel for

jail,

Hunt with

particularly for

his wife

dead,

D: Well, there P:

What

every indication they are hanging in tough right now.

is

do they expect, though?

the hell

What would you

reasonable time.'

Do

they expect clemency in a

advise on that?

—

—

Dean was not about to tell Nixon that without permission he had already promised clemency to several men. So he agreed with Nixon's premise that clemency couldn't be offered, even six months into the future. The president became adamant that nothing should be said publicly about any of the burglars while the cases were on appeal. P:

Maybe we

will have to

change our policy. But the President should

Do you

not become involved in any part of the case.

D:

agree totally,

I

sir.

agree with that?

Absolutely.

Nixon then began to grumble that the people who were really worked up over the supposed White House horrors were the congressional Republicans, rather than the Democrats, who had in the past done some shenanigans of their own. Dean countered with the suggestion that the White House offer Segretti as a sacrificial lamb, admit to his pranks and nothing more. But Nixon was angry: P:

What

in (characterization deleted) did [Segretti]

do? Shouldn't we be

trying to get intelligence? Weren't thev trying to get intelligence from us?

.

.

.

Don't you try to disrupt their meetings? Didn't they try to

disrupt ours? (Kxpletive deleted)

They threw

shouted, cut the sound system, and hell

is

came

that off?

Democrats]

about? Did

all .

.

.

Pranks!

we do [Dick]

let

rocks, ran demonstrations,

the tear gas in at night.

that? lijck

.

.

.

did

What all

What

the

did Segretti do that

those things [for the

in 1960.

Dean then mentioned a name as a difficulty, and it was one for which the president seemed completely unprepared: Herb Kalmbach, Dean told Nixon that Kalmbach's bank records were being subpoenaed, Nixon thought this had something to do with the only matter

The Pressure Mounts him

245

which Kalmbach regularly figured, Nixon's personal transactions for income taxes, the house at San Clemente, and so on. Had they asked for the San Clemente records? "No," Dean said. "Kalmbach is a decent fellow," the president went on, still mystified as to why anyone would want to grill Kalmbach, Nixon even thought that the calling of Kalmbach had to do with the CRP finance committee and the contributions that had been traced into Mexico. "Oh, well, all that can be explained," Dean said, and didn't illuminate the president on the difference between Kalmbach's moneygathering and that of the reelection committee. The president had absolutely no idea that Dean was concerned about Kalmbach, nor that Dean had called for Kalmbach to come to the White House the following week for a detailed coaching before his committee appearance. As we know. Dean had used Kalmbach to raise and deliver hush money. Kalmbach's records those records Dean mentioned to the president without explaining their real significance would contain many references to Kalmbach's paying of Tony Ulasewicz, and both Tony and Herb could testify to Dean's own deep involvement in illegal payoffs and promises of clemency, both of which were obstructions of justice. Dean mentioned Kalmbach so that if he showed up next week and ran into Nixon, the president would think he knew why his "personal attorney" was at the White House. that touched

in

—

The

—

president returned to his

own agenda with an

interesting

suggestion that the Senate committee be forced to set rules for

mony

testi-

would exclude hearsay and innuendo, just as these would be excluded in a courtroom trial; Kleindienst should take that very line with Ervin, the president insisted. Dean tried to wrap up the conversation with the suggestion that Watergate would end up in the "funny that

pages of the history books."

Nixon

said the

most important thing was that

P:

Of course,

I

am

not

dumb and

this (adjective deleted) forced hell

this?

is

What

is

I

A

prank! But

think that our Democratic friends hell

was.

it

I

They

will never forget

entry and bugging.

I

don't think

have people capable of

... it

it

It

he had been

I

it.

His

heard about

What

in the

Are they crazy?

I

wasn't verv funny.

I

They know what the be involved in such stuff. They

know I'd

wasn't!

when

thought,

the matter with these people?

thought they were nuts!

think

at least

known about

completely isolated from the incident and hadn't anger surfaced again as he summarized,

that, too.

—and they

are correct, in that Colson

GOLDEN BOY

246

would do anything. Well, to

you again

D: All P:

until

OK—have a little fun.

you have something

And now

to report to

will not talk

I

J

me.

right, sir.

But

think

I

is

it

very important that you have these talks with our

good friend Kleindienst.

.

done by the White House,

.

.

this

Let's

remember

this [burglary]

was done by the Committee

was not

to Re-Elect,

and Mitchell was the Chairman, correct?

D: That's

correct!

!

i

P:

And

The

Kleindienst owes Mitchell everything.

president

mused

i

would behave properly

that Kleindienst

to

help Mitchell, and imagined that Mitchell himself would have to testify

and that

might ruin him, even though Mitchell would "put on his big As he wrapped up the conversation

it

stone face" and admit to nothing.

with his young counsel, Nixon seemed almost willing to have Mitchell thrown to the wolves just then, but he thought he knew what the senatorial

P:

committee was

Somebody

at the

really after:

White House. They would

like to get

Haldeman

or

Colson, Ehrlichman.

D: Or possibly Dean. You know, P:

Anybody

I

am

a small fish.

the White House, they would

at

they realize you are the lawyer and they deleted) thing to

D: That's P: That's

—but

in

your case

I

think

know you didn't have a (adjective

do with the campaign.

right.

what

D: Alright,

I

think. Well, we'll see you.

—Goodbye.

sir

In his diary,

Dean was "an enormously capable Dean's "amazing" knowledge of how Lyndon Johnson Nixon wrote

that

man," and cited had used the FBI to do intelligence work. Dean, he noted, had already read Six Crises and a speech about the Hiss case that Nixon had made when in Congress, made reference to them in the conversation, and, Nixon was "very impressed. He has shown enormous strength, great intelligence and great subtlety. ... I am glad I am talking to Dean nowj rather than going through

Haldeman

or Ehrlichman.

I

think

I

may;

I

The Pressure Mounts have

made

a

mistake in going through others,

the capabiHty of

As

Dean

I

when

247

there

is

a

man with

can talk to directly."

Dean, the president's lawyer closed the door to the Oval Office knowing that he had talked to the president for over an hour, had not told him anything of substance, and had kept him away from Dean's own culpability in criminal actions. But he also knew he would have to see the president again, and soon, and that he might not be able to hold the facts from Nixon for very much longer. for

—

16

CONFESSION TIE

Dean and the and almost immediately Gray

L. Patrick Gray's confirmation hearings had

president were talking on February 28,

acknowledged that he had shown FBI

Gray offered

soften the admission,

to

begun

on Watergate to Dean. To show these same files to any

files

who wished to view them. It was clear Committee would now have to call Dean to testify senator

the

as

that the Judiciary

about

this,

and for

time public attention came to be focused on John Wesley Dean Who was this young White House counsel to the president, and

first

III.

why would

the acting director of the FBI report to him? At an

impromptu news conference on March to defend

and protect

some care the "enormously capable man" he was coming to 2,

the president took

like.

Dean, Nixon

said,

executive privilege.

would not

The

testify

because he was covered by it at that, however, and

president didn't leave

with a further assertion began to dig a hole under Dean, perhaps without meaning to. Nixon stated flatly that "No one on the White House staff at the time he [Dean] conducted the investigation that

was

last

—was

July and August

involved or had knowledge of the

248

l\

Confession Time

249

Watergate matter." As could have been expected by the White House, reporters then asked for the documentary proof of the president's assertion, in the

form of some written report by Dean to the president

of the sort that the president had mentioned back in September 1972.

Of course

there had been no

Dean

investigation

and no report, but the

president's statement stoked the fire for one to be produced.

Gray continued to testify, and each time he did he raised the ante on John Dean. On March 7, Gray told the Judiciary Committee that he had given Dean eighty-two FBI reports and was "unalterably convinced" that Dean had concealed nothing from him about the contents of Hunt's safe. In this same session. Gray also provided testimony that for the first time linked Haldeman aide Dwight Chapin and Herb Kalmbach to campaign dirty trickster Donald Segretti. At Dean's instigation, the White House issued a statement saying that Dean had turned over to the FBI all the contents of Hunt's safe, but the matter did not die. Gray next testified that he had met with Dean or talked to him by telephone thirty-three times between June and September of 1972. While the Gray hearings held the spotlight, behind the scenes Magruder was coming under increasing pressure from the prosecutors to admit a pre-break-in role. And, awaiting sentencing, James McCord was feeling more and more abandoned.

On March

12, the president issued a

privilege (vetted

that present

mally

.

.

.

long statement about executive

by Dean and possibly prepared by him

and former members of the president's

as well) saying

staff

would "nor-

decline a request for a formal appearance before a committee

of the Congress," even though "executive privilege will not be used as

embarrassing information from being made availimmediate response, the Senate Watergate committee voted unanimously to "invite" Dean to testify. Who could and who could not testify was in the air as John Dean walked into the Oval Office at 12:42 p.m. on March 13, to find Bob Haldeman sitting with the president, and became immediately involved in a discussion of whether Chuck Colson could be billed as an unpaid consultant to the White House, and thus covered by executive privilege not only for the previously concluded period of his actual employment in the White House, but for the current, unpaid period; Haldeman even suggested backdating the papers on this so Colson's employment would be continuous. Nixon cut off this discussion by introducing his a shield to prevent

able." In

own P:

agenda: Apparently you haven't been able

getting

on the offensive?

to

do anything on

my

project of

GOLDEN BOY

250

D: But P:

I

have,

sir.

To the contrary!

Based on Sullivan, have you kicked

Dean

a

few butts around?

he had done just that, taken information from Bill FBI bugging in the past and given it to a speechwriter to prepare a letter to be signed by Senator Barry Goldwater and sent by Goldwater to Senator Ervin. The president and Haldeman were delighted, the president even offering to dig into Internal Revenue Service material to add to the derogatory information. "There is no need at this hour for anything from IRS," Dean said, and then, in effect, told the president the smallest part of the reason why two weeks ago he had raised the issue of Kalmbach. It had been "substantiated" in the press that "Chapin directed Kalmbach to pay Segretti." In a rush to get out bad news in a single breath. Dean referred to an said

Sullivan about

"absolutely inaccurate" story in that morning's Washington Post saying that

Dean had turned

to people at the

CRP

over information about grand jury proceedings so they could confront

CRP employees who

had

not adhered to the proper line during testimony. That story, said

from a CRP secretary who had Democrat." Continuing the blast of bad news. Dean prophesied that there would be lots of press questions that week, questions that did not have "easy answers. For example, did Haldeman know that there was a Don Segretti out there? That question Dean, had been based on an

been, of

is

all

affidavit

things, a "registered

likely."

Since on the transcript Haldeman did not respond to this intensely

and was not heard from throughout the next hour of the conversation, we must assume he had left the room by the time Dean brought up his name. Dean answered his own question: "Yes, he [Haldeman] had knowledge that there was somebody in the field doing red

flag,

prankster-type activities,"

know anything about

he then asked Dean if it would be possible to duck such questions behind a claim that he couldn't go into such matters while they were being investigated by a congressional committee. Dean and the president Nixon's response was, "I don't

that";

then rehearsed what Nixon or press secretary Ron Ziegler would say in response to

hard questions.

D: "But if you have nothing to House, why aren't you willing

know about

it?

Why

hide,

Mr. President, here at the White on the record evervthing you

to spread

doesn't the

Dean Report be made

does Ziegler stand up there and bob and weave, and ment'?" That's the bottom

line.

public?

[say]

Why

'No com-

Confession Time

All

P:

What do you

right.

We

information.

will

say

to

that?

We

investigation P:

"We

will

will

.

.

"We

are furnishing

..."

D: "We have cooperated with the FBI Watergate.

.

251

in

the investigation of the

cooperate with the investigation

of,

the proper

by the Senate."

make

statements."

D: "And, indeed, we have nothing

to hide."

Abbott and Costello couldn't have thrown the with more gusto or better timing.

What

begged for coaching. Chapin? Dean began to

The

ball

president

back and forth

now

practically

should he say about Segretti? Haldeman?

grill

Nixon

as

he had grilled Magruder prior to

grand jury.

Jeb's appearance before the

D: "Will Mr. Haldeman and Mr. Ehrlichman and Mr. Dean go up to the P:

Committee and

testify.^"

"No, absolutely not."

D: "Mr. Colson?" P:

"No, absolutely not.

.

.

.

We

said

are not going to be called to testify."

the rest will grant

D:

Yes, indeed

I

we

but

we

"Dean and

all

will furnish information,

That

is

the position.

you information." Won't you?

will!

Nixon was convinced that "they" hoped to compel an admission "Haldeman did it" and that, one day, someone would be forced to that Nixon himself had done it, but his mind was at ease on the

that

say

subject because "they might question his [Haldeman's] political savvy,

but not mine! Not on a matter like that!" Not even his enemies, Nixon

would believe he had been dumb enough to have condoned, or had personal knowledge of the Watergate break-

clearly thought, initiated, in.

This was

a

dangerous area for Dean, and he found an immediate

escape hatch by bringing the conversation back to Bill Sullivan for five

minutes, and then jumping to the subject of

how

he.

Dean, would

answer the request to testify at the Gray confirmation hearings; Dean said he would offer to respond fully under oath, but only in a letter. After the committee got his written response, friendly Democratic

GOLDEN BOY

252

Senator James Eastland could ask for an immediate vote of confirmation on Gray, foreclosing further discussion. The president attempted to get out from under this subject by saying that Gray wouldn't be a good FBI director "after going through the hell of the hearings," and Dean jumped on the bandwagon, agreeing that Gray would be a "suspect Director." Gray overboard, the pair next turned to the committee hearings, and it was at this point in the conversation that Dean began a great confession to the president.

Dean laid out the dimensions of the though he concealed the most important fact, his own central involvement. In all of Dean's thousands of pages of writings and sworn testimony, this is the closest he ever came to telling the truth; he seems to have held simultaneously in his mind both a belief that the president must be told about Watergate, and a certainty that the president must not be allowed to learn of Dean's own culpability. The confession began as the president tried to understand what damage would be done to the White House as people started to testify on the Hill. In this confession to the president.

Watergate problem in

P:

Who

is

detail,

going to be the

first

witness up there?

D: Sloan. P: Unfortunate.

D:

No

doubt about

to cleanse his soul ing.

.

.

.

The

The mention

is

.

.

.

He's scared, he's weak.

We

by confession.

person

Sloan's testimony

something

it.

who

are giving

will have a greater

Kalmbach.

.

,

He

has a compulsion

him

problem

a lot of strokas a result of

.

of Sloan's weakness was indication that Sloan had

to hide; the president evidently understood that already. But here was that name Kalmbach; again, the president was mystified, and bristled at the idea of the press calling Kalmbach his personal attorney when Nixon only saw him once a year, to sign his income tax returns. What Kalmbach really did, the president said, was handle the payroll at San Clemente. Dean didn't acknowledge the real problem, that Kalmbach had paid Ulasewicz; that would have been too close to Dean. The president wanted to know how others would testify. Those Dean listed in the column of potentially good witnesses were the ones whom Dean had coached: Kalmbach and Magruder.

Confession Time

253

Nixon wanted the hearings over with, and quickly, because the press was viewing this as a "grave crisis in the confidency of the

Presidency," and that could not be allowed to go on for very long.

Although he believed only the "upper

intellectual types

.

.

.

,

the soft

heads" were interested in Watergate, there would be "new revelations" at

the hearings,

and "Let's face

Haldeman." "Haldeman and

Mitchell,'"

own

Dean

it,

think they are really after

I

said,

emphasizing the cover-up

we

line

few moments later Dean would come close to contradicting himself and almost tell the truth about xMitchell's noninvolvement.) The president began to probe in the style that his chief aides had come to know so well, the designed to protect his

asking of

many

agenda. (As

will see, a

questions to bring out information. Nixon's focus was

intense and direct.

P:

Haldeman's problem

D: Bob's problem P:

Why

is

didn't,

D: That's P:

Now

deleted)

Chapin,

isn't it?

circumstantial.

that? Let's look at the circumstantial

is

any of those people

Bob

is

like the

Hunts and

all

.

.

where the if I

hell,

or

how much Chapin knew

I

know.

you think

so?

not.

P: Strachan?

P:

D: P:

D:

know

right.

D: Absolutely

D:

didn't

Colson did, but

OK?

D: Chapin didn't know anything about the Watergate. P: Don't

Bob

.

that bunch.

Yes.

He knew? Yes.

About the Watergate? Yes.

P: Well, then, he

probably told Bob.

will

be (expletive

—

GOLDEN BOY

254

Dean had

just

informed Nixon, nine months

Strachan had known about president that everything

—had

Dean

ing

was

a

told the

and had been

lie

Dean was coming

close

president at

all.

after the break-in, that

Dean told the Haldeman or Ehrlichman reflectpresident of "no White House involvement" it all

Dean

along. At one stroke,

—

or

from the beginning. Testament to how

a lie

to spilling the truth

is

that he told this to the

Before the Senate, later in 1973, he would deny

Strachan's involvement, and

it

was only

after

he had served his four-

month sentence that he would admit, in Blind Ambition, to having known of Strachan's role since his walk in the park with Gordon Liddy on June

19, 1972.

In the conversation in the Oval Office, he tried to

an alarm

P:

I

bell

when he heard

then, but Strachan. Strachan

D:

They would

Yes.

knowledge of P:

the president

one.

be damned! Well, that

will

tell

would not break on the witness stand, but Nixon knew

that Strachan

Who knew

it,

is

the problem in Bob's case.

worked

Not Chapin,

for him, didn't he?

have one hell of a time proving that Strachan had

though.

—Magruder?

better

D: Magruder and Liddy. P:

Oh,

see.

I

The

other weak link for

Bob

is

Magruder.

He

hired him,

et cetera.

D: That applies

to Mitchell, too.

The president continued to press, leaping in his mind from Mitchell Magruder to Colson and Hunt, remembering a faint impression of a time when Haldeman had mentioned to him "something about the Convention problems they were planning. ... I assume that must

to

.

have been

.

.

No, Dean

.

.

.

Segretti." said rather definitively, Segretti wasn't involved in intel-

was new to Nixon. know, then who had done it?

ligence gathering. This

wanted

to

If

not Segretti, the president

Well,

you

see Watergate

of intelligence gathering, and this was their

first

thing.

D: That was Liddy and

his outfit.

is

P:

That was such

a stupid thing!

.

.

.

was part

What happened

Confession Time

D:

It

was incredible,

that's right.

255

That was Hunt.

—

To think of Mitchell and Bob would have allowed would have allowed this kind of operation to be in the campaign committee! P:

—

D: P:

don't think he [Haldeman]

I

I

don't think that Mitchell

knew

it

was

knew about

there.

this sort of thing.

D: Oh, no, no! Don't misunderstand me. I don't think that he knew the people. I think he knew that Liddy was out intelligence gathering. I

knew

don't think he

(expletive deleted),

Mitchell

The

that

Liddy would use

who worked

knew about Hunt,

for the

either.

.

.

a

McCord,

fellow like

Committee. ...

I

don't think

.

mused on what Mitchell would say, hoped it would Dean had just told him, and leaped to the idea that deputy Magruder would back up Mitchell. Here was a

president

be precisely what Mitchell's

danger signal for Dean, for as he then told the president, under recent questioning by the prosecutors Magruder had named Dean as the man

who had sponsored Liddy

CRP. Nixon asked directly whether Dean, and Dean denied it completely, and immediately segued into the same defense of Liddy as he had given for Strachan that Liddy would not crack under questioning. Nixon, realizing at least in part the ramifications of what Dean had been telling him, cut short Dean's paean to Liddy's strength, and asked a key question. "Is it too late to go the hang-out road?" Here was a terrifying idea for Dean, made all the more so by the president's noting that Ehrlichman was recommending that the president do just that lay out on the table precisely what had happened, admit responsibility, fire whomever was responsible, and let Congress, the courts, and the American public judge how small a matter Watergate had been in relation to Nixon's more significant achievements. But Liddy had ever worked

to the

for

—

—

a

complete "hang-out road" would mean that Dean's central role in

both the break-ins and the cover-up would be revealed. In response to this

suggestion.

D: There a lot

a certain

domino

situation here. If

inarticulate.

some things

start going,

of other things are going to start going, and there can be a

problems dent.

is

Dean suddenly became almost

I

if

everything starts falling. So

would be

less

than candid

if I

there are dangers,

didn't

tell

you there

Mr.

lot

of

Presi-

are.

The president backed off a bit, saying he hadn't meant that everyone should go up on the Hill and testify, but, rather, the true story

— GOLDEN BOY

256

should come from the ran with

"PR

people."

Dean

and

gratefully took the ball

admitting to the president that the cover-up

it,

line, to

the

White House knew about the break-in, could be sustained even though "there are some people who saw the fruits of it, but that is another story. I am talking about the criminal conspiracy to go in there." Nixon understood this to be (he later wrote) "a lawyer's distinction," but one that would allow him to continue to maintain that the White House had not planned the breakeffect that technically

no one

at the

ins.

That was only momentary

respite for the president,

however,

because his young counsel was seeing and identifying incoming missile

from

fire

Dean segued to Segretti and noted that the would have to twist Segretti's story in order to "more sinister, more involved, part of a general plan." The directions.

all

president's enemies

paint

it

as

president shook a metaphorical

fist

enemies, saying that "the establishment

Watergate was their

"That said. "It

The

is

why

I

last

ranting about those

at the sky, is

dying" and that the fuss over

gasp before his ultimate triumph.

keep coming back to

Dean

this fellow Sullivan,"

could change the picture." president wasn't buying that as he had in past meetings.

could Sullivan help? Perhaps only

if

the former

FBI

How

assistant director

"would get Kennedy into it." Having deflected Nixon, and using the totemic Kennedy name, Dean now tried to frighten the president away from the "hang-out road" by informing him that if people went after Segretti they would find Kalmbach, and if they found Kalmbach they would find Caulfield and the fact that a man working for Caulfield had spent two years investigating Chappaquiddick on the president's nickel. Again, the president wasn't buying. So what if he'd had a potential opponent's biggest calamity investigated?

"Why

don't

we

get

it

out

anyway?"

"We

don't want to surface

him

[the

Chappaquiddick investigator

Ulasewicz] right now," Dean said quickly, and came close to admitting his real reason for saying so, that

people were asking for Kalmbach's

bank records. Still

mystified, and perhaps needing to digest

told in this confession that shattered

and

beliefs

grasped

all

straw and stirred

that he

his previous

about no W'hite House involvement

at the Sullivan

all

it

had been

understandings

in Watergate,

about for the

last

Nixon

minutes

of the conversation.

But Dean now tried to suggest that trotting Sullivan out wouldn't be entirely positive for Nixon either, because though Sullivan wouldn't

!

— ,

Confession Time

"give

257

up the White House," he did have "knowledge of the earher

(unintelHgible) that occurred here."

"That we did?" Nixon asked. "That we did," Dean affirmed. Nixon argued that SulHvan could conceal ushered Dean out dull,

is

at 2:00 p.m.

with

this if

he had

to,

and then

a rhetorical question, "It

is

never

kr

"Never,"

On March

Dean

agreed.

15, at a press

conference, the questions to

Nixon centered

on Dean and Watergate, and the president still defended Dean and said he was doubly covered from testifying by executive privilege and his position as the president's lawyer. But the questioning worried Nixon. "With the doggedness of one who suddenly finds himself surrounded by a raging storm" he wrote in RN, "I clung to my one landmark even though it was now apparently anchored upon a technicality: that no one in the White House had been involved in the Watergate breakin. I had been told that Strachan had known about the bugging after the fact but he had not been part of the decision to do it." That wasn't quite so. Dean had actually told Nixon that Strachan knew of the break-ins before they happened, but the president chose to interpret Dean's admission otherwise. In any event, after this

—

confessional conversation, the president resolved to press

more firmly

from Dean that would repeat what Dean had been telling the upper echelon for nine months, and that would show, in Nixon's words, "there was no evidence against Colson, Chapin, or Haldeman on Watergate." He conveyed that idea in those words to Dean on the sixteenth, and repeated the need for a Dean Report on the seventeenth, in another conversation recorded in the Oval Office. Although portions of this tape that should have been made public in 1974 were withheld at the time, some additionally relevant portions were included in Nixon's autobiography, written later; they refer to John Mitchell and Bob Haldeman. Having exonerated both men in his own confession of March 1 3 Dean on the seventeenth tried to clarify the matter for the president, and to protect himself at the same time. Dean said he had attended meetings in Mitchell's office where Liddy's plans were laid out. They included bugging, but. Dean said, neither he nor Mitchell had agreed to the bugging. Nixon later wrote that he could visualize the scene "and Mitchell's inscrutability," saying nothing and puffing on his pipe, "the manner he always adopted when having to tolerate amateurs."

for a written statement

GOLDEN BOY

258

Dean reported

meeting with Haldeman, the to the White House and told Haldeman about the Mitchell-Liddy meeting and the GEMSTONE plan. He and Bob, Dean reported to the president, had agreed that the White House had to stay "ten miles away from it because it is just not right and we can't have any part of it." According to Dean this was when he and Haldeman thought they had "turned off" any bugging actions. As we have seen, Haldeman later wrote that he couldn't remember this supposed incident, but that Dean kept referring to it and insisting that it had happened, until Haldeman for a time convinced himself that it had. It wasn't until Haldeman consulted his logs and extensive meeting notes that he discovered that the Dean disclaimer session with

one

in

as fact his fabricated

which he claimed

come back

to have

—

him had never happened. Nonetheless, on March

17 the president

was glad

to hear about that

Dean wouldn't have to write the Dean Report since everyone

disclaimer session, and suggested that

about the meeting with Mitchell in

had said no to the bugging! Then the president went on to tick off the administration's vulnerabilities, as he now understood them: Mitchell, Colson, Haldeman, and Chapin. Dean responded that he would add his own name because he had been "all over this thing like a blanket." Nixon agreed, but said that was post-break-in, and suggested that, unlike the others. Dean had no problem of criminal liability. "That's right,"

Dean

said.

Dean on Magruder and Strachan and why anybody would have gone into, of all places, the DNC. "That absolutely mystifies me," Dean said. The president was concerned about Magruder, who. Woodward

The

president pressed

and Bernstein reported in the Washington Post, was telling prosecutors Haldeman, and Dean had known about the break-ins in

that Colson,

advance. "I did not believe the accusation," Nixon later wrote, "but

thought

Dean observed,

that, as

if

Magruder

I

ever saw himself sinking

he would reach out to grab anyone he could get hold of." The president could see no alternative but to admit that Liddy had done the job.

Dean now problem

said this

would be

a

problem

—though he didn't

say

it

for himself. Instead, he substituted Ehrlichman as the

was

a

new

target, telling the president that

Hunt and Liddy had worked

Ehrlichman, specifically in the break-in

—

at

for

the office of Dr. Fielding.

?" Nixon exclaimed. "What in the name of in the world something (unintelligible) in the Ellsberg was Ehrlichman having God (unintelligible)? This is the first I ever heard of this! ... I can't see

"What

.

.

.

that getting into, into this hearing."

— Confession Time

259

It wasn't the first Nixon had heard of it, according to EhrHchman's memoir; he remembers distinctly telHng Nixon about that break-in during the summer of 1972, as they walked together on the sand south of San Clemente. The event came up because Nixon was discussing the who objected to the idea possibility of pardons, and Ehrlichman brought up the point that Liddy and Hunt might want especially broad pardons to exonerate them from just such escapades as the Dr. Fielding

—

Nixon has denied ordering the Dr. Fielding break-in or knowing of it before Dean told him. When Ehrlichman reminded him in 1973 of their 1972 conversation, Nixon shrugged it off with the observation, "Well ... it evidently didn't make any impression on me." In any event, during his conversation with Dean, Nixon's real concern was not whether the burglary had occurred; it was that the whole affair was in danger of being brought to light. Dean then told him about the picture of Liddy in the CIA files, and how the date of the burglary was contemporaneous with Liddy's employment at the White House. Nixon reiterated his main point, the hope that the Dr. Fielding burglary was irrelevant to the Ervin hearings, and that it could be concealed. break-in.

Three days later, in an evening phone call, John Dean said that he wanted to come to the president and lay out everything, "so that you operate from the same facts that everybody else has." Nixon sounded grateful for this, asked rhetorically if he wanted anyone else there, then acknowledged, "It is better with nobody else there, isn't it? .

Anybody

else,

they are

"That's right,"

all

Dean

.

partisan interest, virtually."

agreed.

They set a date for ten the next morning, March 21, 1973, when John Dean implied he would let the president know

time

.

for the all

that

he knew, in a tape that has become famous for Dean's warning to the president that there was a cancer growing within Nixon's presidency.

17

THE CANCER WITHIN THE PRESIDENCY

THE

"cancer within the presidency" tape of

previously been understood as the time

March

21, 1973, has

when John Dean warned Nixon

of the grave danger to his presidency and ended the cover-up. But that interpretation of the

March

21 tape

is

based almost entirely on the

perception of a credible and truthful John Dean, and, as

we

have

shown. Dean lied repeatedly before the Senate committee and to every other forum in which he testified. As Dean and the president prepared to meet on the morning of March 2 1 James McCord was off the reservation, and Howard Hunt seemed likely to follow. McCord had written a letter to Judge Sirica saying that he and other defendants had been under heavy pressure to plead guilty and remain silent, that higher-ups were indeed involved, and that perjury was committed at the trial. Shortly, Sirica would release this letter and McCord would begin to spill some of what he knew. Howard Hunt had left five clearly desperate messages at the White House indicating that he, too, might want to sing rather than to spend a long time in jail; it was these latest Hunt demands, Dean wrote in his book, that drove him to end the cover-up. As if McCord and ,

260

— The Cancer Within the Presidency Hunt were not enough

261

worry Dean, Senator Ervin had threatened to cite for contempt of Congress any executive branch official who refused to testify before the Watergate committee on the challenged grounds of executive privilege and Dean was the official they wanted most to hear. After initial discussion about how stupid Pat Gray had been in an offer Kleindienst had now offering to show senators raw FBI files to

—

rescinded, with Nixon's approval

— —the conversation came

directly to

the point.

D:

I

got.

think there

We

is

growing

it

compounds

daily.

the details of

mailed;

2)

P:

And

That

itself.

why

is

growing.

It

compounded, growing geometrically now, because That will be clear if I, you know, explain some of

it

is.

Basically

it

is

because

1)

we

are being black-

had

there

is

to perjure themselves to protect other people in the

no assurance

that won't bust?

D: That

Dean

It's

people are going to start perjuring themselves very quickly

that have not line.

no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we've

is

have a cancer within, close to the Presidency, that

that won't bust.

said

he wanted to take the president over how the whole thing it had done so "with an instruction to me

got started, and insisted that

from Bob Haldeman to see if we couldn't set up a perfectly legitimate campaign intelligence operation" at the CRP. This was false, as it was Dean rather than Haldeman who had pushed Liddv and the revised Sand wedge Plan on the CRP for Dean's own purposes. But Nixon didn't know that, and kept listening as Dean went on, describing almost precisely what happened but at every turn ascribing the initiator as

someone other than himself. At times the

Ehrlichman, Colson, Strachan, Magruder,

was Haldeman,

culprit

IVlitchell,

or Liddy, depend-

whom Dean

needed to cover his own tracks. For instance, he Hunt and Liddy to Colson, who. Dean told the president, had issued an ultimatum to the CRP to "fish or cut bait" ing

on

attributed the desire to use

in regard to these valuable resources.

Every time the president tried to pin Dean person's culpability.

Dean would

down

as to a particular

shift the focus to yet

another person.

Nixon thought he had Strachan firmly in his sights, but Dean said that Strachan had merely been the tickler to Magruder, who had issued orders to Liddy. So was it Magruder? Dean said yes, but immediately shifted the conversation to the startling statement.

GOLDEN BOY

262

D:

I

don't

know

if

Mitchell has perjured himself in the

Grand Jury

or

not. P:

Who?

D: Mitchell. that

I

don't

Porter has perjured P:

know how much knowledge he actually had. I know in the Grand Jury. I know that himself in the Grand Jury.

Magruder has perjured himself

Who

The

is

Porter?

president might as well have asked, "Who's on first?", the tag

comedy routine. Befuddled by Dean's verbal quickhe was softened up for Dean's real point, his flat-out statement, "I know that as God is my maker, I had no knowledge that they were going to do this [go back into the DNC]." Since no contradiction or even an insightful question came from the president line to the old

change

act,

Dean

and told the president some things that were true: "I was totally aware of what the Bureau was doing at all times. I was totally aware of what the Grand Jury was doing. I knew what witnesses were going to be called. I knew what they were asked, and I had to." What Dean did not tell the president was his true motive for being so "totally aware." Now Dean hit the heavy stuff, "the most troublesome post-thing." He said that "1) Bob [Haldeman] is involved in that; 2) John [Ehrlichman] is involved in that; 3) I am involved in that; 4) Mitchell is involved in that. And that is an obstruction of justice." This was a lot for Nixon to digest, the idea of his two top aides, his closest friend, and his counsel all accused of obstructing justice. He wanted to go over the names one by one. Dean started to explain Haldeman's involvement, but soon shifted back to his real theme, the "continual blackmail operation by Hunt and Liddy and the Cubans." This was a problem because "the blackmail is continuing," again, not telling Nixon that only Dean himself was being "blackmailed" by Hunt. The president told Dean that he had had a discussion about a possible commutation of Hunt's sentence on the grounds of compassion after that bald-faced

lie,

shifted

for Hunt's wife's death, but hadn't agreed to

Now Dean

—

hit

his

stride

and revealed

it.

his true

agenda for the

had promised, to tell the president everything Nixon needed to know, but to ask Nixon for money with which to continue to keep certain lips sealed. "1 here is a real problem in raising meeting

not, as he

money," Dean

asserted,

Mitchell had in finding

and told of the

money

difficulties that

for this purpose.

even John

The Cancer Within the Presidency P:

D:

How much money do you I

263

need?

would say these people are going

to cost a million dollars over the

next two years.

The president said that could be obtained, in cash if necessary. "I know where it could be gotten. It is not easy, but it could be done." There was some discussion of who would handle the task. Since this tape was made public in 1974, people have argued whether or not the president really agreed to pay hush money to the burglars in this tape. Some say he did, others claim that he simply explored the matter with Dean at this point on the tape "I'm just

—

thinking out loud, here, for a later in the

obtained, "but

it

would be wrong." The

for the latter notion

or pay

moment," Nixon

actually said

money

is

since

clearest indication of support

that the president did not direct

and weeks, so even

in the next days

—

money could be

conversation Nixon also said that the

if

agreed to pay in this meeting, he didn't take action to do

anyone he had so.

to find tacitly

And when

wanted action, he usually got it. Contrast this nonpayment of further hush money with the quick action taken to have the CIA obstruct the FBI's investigation in June 1972, within hours of the the president

president's having agreed to that notion.

In this conversation,

guessing game.

Who,

the president tried again to play Dean's

precisely,

had

to

be kept under control

—Bud

Krogh, who had just perjured himself? Mitchell and Magruder, who Nixon was told were about to? Liddy? Hunt? Kalmbach? Here was that odd name again. But this third time Dean brought

up Kalmbach's name, Dean

finally spilled the

beans

—

a bit.

"He

has

a man who I only know by the name of "Tony; who is the who did the Chappaquiddick study." But Kalmbach disappeared

maintained fellow as

quickly as

politically

Dean had made him

appear: "Herb's problems are

embarrassing, but not criminal."

A

half-minute earlier.

Dean had been saying that Kalmbach was about to commit perjury. No wonder the president seemed befuddled. Was Dean's argument that a cancer was growing, but could be ameliorated by the application of hush money, which should now be spread around more magnanimously to assuage the problems of those who were perjuring themselves as well as those who were maintaining silence? That seemed to be the message coming through such impenetrable lines as these: D: What

really bothers

me

is

this

growing

situation.

As

I

say,

it

is

growing because of the continued need to provide support for the

— GOLDEN BOY

264

Watergate people

and the need road

who

are going to hold us

some people

for

up

for everything we've got,

to perjure themselves as they

here. If this thing ever blows,

then

we

go down the

are in a cover-up situation.

Nixon thought the way out would be to fire some of the men Dean seemed to agree, though he said the real problem was "the person who will be hurt by it most will be you and the involved, and

Presidency."

The

president understood that threat, but had reached

the point of believing that disclosure, had to be

some

disclosure, perhaps even complete

made.

Dean could not withstand

full disclosure.

He

raised an idea that

They would ask for new grand jury and then send many White House and CRP witnesses before it. Dean embraced this notion but was careful to agree that one

the president had already heard from Ehrlichman. a

men who

could really hurt him, Jeb Magruder, ought to be granted immunity before testifying. "Some people are going to have to of the few

jail," Dean said flatly. "That is the long and Then Dean completed the last bit of his own

go to

telling the president that he. justice.

Nixon scoffed

Dean, could go to

at this,

first-year law student: "I have

care of people out there

a

it."

selective confession,

jail

for obstruction of

but Dean lectured as

been

who

the short of

if

Nixon were

a

conduit for information on taking

are guilty of crimes."

thought that could be glossed over with

a little luck;

The

president

of course, the

know all of what Dean had done, nor for how long Dean had been involved in criminal acts. Dean pleaded for the chance to bring Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, and himself together in a single room and get everyone's story president did not

straight so that

if

called to testify they could have a coherent line that

them all. 1 he president wasn't opposed to that, but vowed that should Haldeman and F.hrlichman be indicted, he was prepared to "tough it through." Nixon asked his young counsel to come and brief the cabinet on what he had found out about all the people involved, and tell the cabinet not what he knew, but what he had been told "Haldeman is not involved, Ehrlichman is not involved," the president told Dean to say to the cabinet. "Sir, I can give them a show. We can sell them just like we were selling Wheaties on our position," Dean said. Clearly, neither the president nor Dean considered admitting to the cabinet the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Since Dean had agreed to his scheme, Nixon would now agree to Dean's, and called in Haldeman to see if the four-way meeting could be arranged. Mitchell and Ehrlichman were away, but by Thursday it would

clear

could be done.

I

he bulk of the next half-hour was spent discussing the

The Cancer Within the Presidency

265

with Haldeman and Dean. The president's position was clear: Even if certain people were criminally liable, the White House and CRP people were to check their stories with one another, then find and adhere to a single line to keep the

culpabilities of the president's

men

—

away from the first and second ranks away from Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Chapin, Strachan, Magruder. Well, maybe they would let Magruder perjure himself and be sent to jail. Nixon told Bob Haldeman of Dean's idea of covering over sins with money, but Nixon acknowledged that payment of $1 million in continued hush money would be fruitless, because eventually people would talk anyway. That point cleared up, Nixon returned to the suggestion of a new grand jury at which his men would testify, "and that gives you a reason not to have to go before the Ervin and Baker Committee," because the witnesses could then argue that they had already testified in secret, and that their testimony was sealed. Better a private forum investigation

than a public one. In the time since earlier,

Dean had

last

heard the suggestion, a half-hour

he had evidently decided that appearing before the grand jury

was not without

its

perils

—

for him.

have

full

appreciation that there

is

start down any route warned, "we've got to

"Once we

that involves the criminal justice system," he really

no control over

that."

Haldeman, however, wanted to have everyone go to the grand jury, and Ehrlichman had been the original sponsor of the idea, and they were going to bring in Mitchell and have him reflect on it, too. Trapped for the moment. Dean said little more. He was way ahead of the others in his understanding of the position they might shortly assume: that everyone must testify without immunity, even Dean. That, of course,

would be devastating for Dean, so he kept his mouth uncharacteristitoward the later part of the conversation. The president was willing to meet with the foursome or not, he left it to their discretion, but on one point he was specific: At the end of their deliberations, Dean should report to him on how it came out. As the meeting ended, Nixon seemed resigned to some losses. The Watergate monster had been contained before the election, but he told Haldeman and Dean that he couldn't allow it to eat at his administration for the next four years. The public furor over Watergate must be brought to an end. "Delaying is the great danger to the White House," the president summed up before ushering his aides out.

cally shut

a late afternoon meeting that same day. Dean, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman met with the president, and the immediate subject was

At

"John's

Grand Jury package," which included immunity

for

some

GOLDEN BOY

266

White House counsel before Dean, advised pushed for a document that would review the facts as the White House saw them, "and that would have becoming the battle ground on a the effect of turning the scope reduced scope." The Dean Report would be "a basic document" on "a limited subject that would rather conspicuously hit the target." They discussed clemency; the president had said in the morning that it couldn't be done for at least two years, but Dean repeated Hunt's demand that he be out of jail by Christmas of 1973. Dean was clearly worried about more and more people possibly "blowing." witnesses. Ehrlichman,

that this "can't be carried off," and

.

D:

It is

not only

.

.

.

knowledge. There are those

who

.

.

within this circle of people, that have tidbits of a lot

of weak individuals and

it

could be one of

crosses up: the secretary to Liddy, the secretary to Jeb

Magruder, Chuck Colson's secretary, among others,

will

be called before

the Senate Committee.

—

The

real problem. Dean maintained and, although he did not say was the crucial problem for Dean himself was that depositions and testimonies would be checked one against another for "inconsistenso, this

—

cies."

Nixon

worry about that," and was con[who thought] they were doing things for the best interests of their country." Haldeman echoed this thought, saying that no one had done anything for money, as had been the case in the Eisenhower administration. Dean had a new idea, a "super-Presidential board" to hear the witnesses, thus bypassing both the Senate and the grand jury. Haldeman thought that was a terrible notion, for the public would see through it; Ehrlichman came back to "another way," a Dean Report. said he wasn't "going to

cerned for "these young people

E:

The

.

.

.

President then makes a bold disclosure of everything which he

then has.

And

is

in a position if

it

does collapse

had the FBI and the Grand Jury, and over every document

people and as

is

I

obvious

could find.

I

at a later

my own placed in my

I

had

time to say, "I

Counsel,

I

turned

confidence young

now ..."

The Dean Report: The president complained that he had asked for and did not yet have it. As the men discussed it, the report grew in importance and size. It would have appendices listing the FBI data' Dean had seen, and his interviews with Kalmbach, Segretti, Magruder, Chapin, and Ehrlichman. "The President is in a stronger position later, it

—

—

The Cancer Within the Presidency

267

he can be shown to have justifiably reHed on you [Dean] at this point in time," EhrHchman concluded. Dean was alarmed at the thought: if

D: Well, there

Maybe

H: This P:

As

much

is

now that Dean's Maybe someone else

the argument

shouldn't do

I

it.

credibility

will rehabilitate

you, though. Your credibility

matter of

John,

a

fact,

I

is

in question.

don't think your credibility has been

injured.

and perhaps they'd publish it, perhaps only show it to Sam Ervin, or only to the Justice Department. But Magruder was now at the Commerce Department, and portions relating to him would have to be shown there. Who else would be vulnerable that way? There'd be

a report,

D: Draw numbers with names out of a hat to see who gets hurt and who That sounds about as fair as you can be, because anyone can

doesn't.

get hurt.

do

it,

is

.

—

The thing Hunt has now .

.

that

I

would

like to

happen,

if it is

possible to

sent a blackmail request directly to the White

House.

But they were no longer interested in Hunt, because a Dean Report would put the White House way out in front of whatever damage Haldeman, EhrHchman, and the president thought Hunt could do to them, say, insofar as impugning Colson. The others in the room didn't for a moment realize the danger Hunt posed to Dean. Nixon quoted Dean back to him, suggesting that cutting out the cancer would eliminate such small problems as Hunt. Dean backed off: "You see, it is

a

temporary cancer."

could not say, and what those in the room never completely understood, was that the true cancer within the presidency was John Dean himself. That cancer had metastasized now, had

What Dean

reproduced

many

itself in so

places in the administration that even

remove the original tumor could no longer save the presidency was mortally infected, and Nixon did Nixon The

radical surgery to patient.

not

know it. Dean was

so slippery and well informed that it was hard to accept he was the problem. For instance, Dean began to suggest to his audience precisely what Sirica would do and say from the bench two days hence when he sentenced the burglars. "He will charge that he doesn't believe that the lawyers for the government presented a

that

.

legitimate case

.

.

and that he

is

not convinced that the case represents the

—

GOLDEN BOY

268

How

situation."

full

Dean know? His

did

sources must be truly

amazing, the listeners had to conclude; he was a sentencing,

Dean went on

before a

new grand

to those

who

How

jury,

to

all

whom,

in their

A

week after the burglars would go

with Sirica promising to give lighter sentences

talked.

when

Maybe

it

could

all

be resolved the

them the March Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Dean

the sagacious, stone-faced John Mitchell gave

benefit of his thoughts.

when

22, at 1:57 p.m.,

met

to prophesy,

to get out in front of that?

next day,

man

they had to pay close attention.

state of ignorance,

The meeting was Mitchell,

—with the president present—

thus adjourned until

in Nixon's office in the

EOB.

Wednesday evening and Thursday afternoon, Committee that Dean had probably lied when he first told the FBI that he didn't know whether or not Howard Hunt had a White House office. This became the first topic of the meeting in Nixon's EOB office. Haldeman summed it up succinctly, "The headline for tonight will be gray says dean lies." As Dean was beginning to realize, even a man long since chucked overboard could come back to haunt you. The Dean Report: Even Mitchell thought that a good idea; the young counsel could go to Camp David over the weekend and write it. Trying to seem cooperative, Dean said that he already had the Segretti In the interim between

Pat

Gray had

told the Judiciary

section done, but "I really can't say until

where we are and though." P:

"I

And

I

certainly think

it is

have reviewed the record, Mr.

on appeal, here

right of defendants

FBI records;

I

something that should be done, it would read: President,

members

the

Grand Jury

transcripts

room about

the

at

all

whom

are

of the White

you have asked me about.

have read the

They went around

and without

and so forth, some of

are the facts with regard to

staff et cetera, et cetera, that

[write the Watergate sections]

how

the president fantasized

compromising the

I

I

House

have checked the

et cetera, et cetera.''

Dean Report

for

some

minutes, and then came to the heart of the discussion, the plan for the president's

men

Mitchell was ing in

its

all

to for

go before it;

a

all

grand jury.

indeed, his suggestion was almost breathtak-

simplicity, ingenuity,

and

political savvy:

everyone, without

exception and including himself, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Dean,

would testify before the grand jury, without immunity. They would open themselves to possible criminal liabilities, but must be willing to pay such a price to allow the president to then say that none of his.

— The Cancer Within the Presidency

269

people would testify on the Hill, because they had already done so to

more proper forum, the grand jury. Politically, they would have had full disclosure, but since the grand jury hearings were supposed to be kept secret, they would be protected. A moment of reflection. Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell were not fools, nor were they intent on going to jail to save the chief. They firmly believed they had done nothing wrong, and that while grand jury appearances would put them in danger, they would not be indicted nor convicted on the basis of their appearances. None of these three men had approved the break-ins, and for that reason they thought they were pretty much in the clear. There was some banter that perhaps Dean could be "negotiated out" of the arrangement by claiming the lawyer-client privilege with the president, but the other "big fish" would have to go. (As Dean feared they would, a few days later Haldeman and Ehrlichman came to the conclusion that Dean ought to testify without immunity before the grand jury; of course there would be areas that touched the president on which he could legitimately refuse to testify, but before the grand jury Dean would have a chance to defend himself.) Haldeman was all for the grand jury appearances of the "big fish," telling the president that while on constitutional grounds he was correct in preventing his aides on the basis of claiming executive privilege from the

testifying before the Senate,

H: To the guy who says that

"The

is

sitting at

president

is

home who watches John Chancellor who

covering this up by this historic review

blanket of the widest exercise of executive privilege in American history

and

all

that," [the

he's got

guy

no problem,

at

home]

why

says,

doesn't he

"What the hell's he covering up? them go talk?"

If

let

Mitchell emphatically agreed, saying that the matter related to a

domestic or

Henry

affair,

not to something truly important such as foreign affairs

Kissinger's next mission. Full disclosure, that

was Mitchell's

message.

would talk to the Senate committee and try some general procedural rules on executive privilege Kleindienst was to be point man on that with Baker and Ervin but all In the meantime, they

to establish

—

the while,

they'd be trying to circumvent the committee through

mounting a grand jury show. And Dean was to go to Camp David and write a document that would allow the individual players to know what they should say to that grand jury.

—

GOLDEN BOY

270

Do you

P:

we want

think

to

go

this route

now? Let

it

hang out, so

to

speak?

D: Well,

it

H:

It's

D:

It is a

isn't really that

hang

a limited

out.

hang

limited

out.

It's

not an absolute hang out.

But some of the questions look big hanging out publicly or

P:

D: What from

That

it.

Oh,

P:

it is

I

doing, Mr. President, is

know.

negative on

it.

is

getting

privately.

you up above and away

the most important thing. I

suggested that the other day, and they

Now, what

D: Lack of candidate or

a

all

came down

has changed their minds?

body.

room laughed at Dean's reference to their not having a person handy who could properly take the fall. The meeting cascaded to a close, and Dean headed toward Camp David. Everyone

in the

what happened to him when he was sent to Camp David to write the Dean Report, everything was a surprise the idea of the report, his sudden conversion to truthfulness, and so on. He brought Mo along, and confessed everything to her; she told him to be honest and tell the world what he knew. Troubled, he went walking in the woods until a guard asked him if he was lost. No, he replied, he In Dean's version of

—

found the way. In his moment of finding grace, he understood that Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Nixon really did have "a candidate or a body," that the fall guy was to be John Mitchell, and that he, Dean,

had

just

must not take part in the savaging of such a wonderful man. Therefore, there could be no Dean Report. It was then, in Dean's version, that he decided to tell the truth to the prosecutors, in hope that justice would be kind

as well as blind.

Nonsense. Or, perhaps, the sort of judiciously couched psychological explanation of events that convinces for a time in the absence of facts.

Dean could not

write a

Dean Report

for several reasons. If

he wrote

would incriminate himself; if he wrote one that was him at risk because of the criminal implica-^ tions of submitting a false report. Last, if he submitted any sort of report that was detailed enough to be believed, others would be able to read it and deduce its history of deception. Moreover, the facts a truthful one, false, that

it

would

also put

I

The Cancer Within the Presidency

271

controvert Dean's version of a sudden lurch toward truth.

From

his

account and from collateral ones, we know that at Camp David Dean did not write a report but made three crucial telephone calls,

own

none of which were even

connected to ascertaining or relating

faintly

the truth.

The

press had reported what had happened in Sirica's courtroom: had made public James McCord's letter saying that higher-ups in the White House were involved in the break-ins. Dean's first call was in relation to these press reports, and it was to Jeb Magruder, who knew and could testify to Dean's central role in both the break-ins and the cover-up. To get out of this tight spot. Dean needed to neutralize Magruder. Dean had managed to procure a tape recorder and sought to get Jeb on tape exonerating him from pre-break-in knowledge. He telephoned and found Magruder frantic because both of their pictures and McCord's damning letter were splashed over the front page of the Los Angeles Times. The opening paragraph of that story stated clearly that McCord had said that both Magruder and Dean had Sirica

"prior knowledge of the bugging" before the break-in.

—

So Magruder

how know what is anything that we can do we can do right now. I right now." Beyond that, Magruder wanted to believe that McCord had no evidence connecting him to the break-ins "McCord never met with "We've got to figure

said,

we can handle

this.

I

John,

I

think

we

—

know what we don't know if there

don't

gotta just figure out

I

mean

I

don't

—

either myself or

anyone

else at

help on corroborating that.

our committee"

He told

his

—and wanted

coach that McCord,

Dean's

whom they

deprecated as a name-dropper, would probably say Dean, Mitchell,

Haldeman, and Strachan were "all behind it." But Dean had another agenda: He wanted Jeb to say on the tape that he, Dean, had nothing to do with it at all. Unfortunately, Jeb wasn't biting. He told Dean, "I'm going to have to rely on you or whatever when we have to go down to the grand jury." Unable to get Jeb to say the magic words. Dean tried stating his own case, to see if Magruder would agree or disagree. "I know that I'd told Haldeman after that meeting that it had to be turned off. Now what happened in the interim I don't have any idea, I don't want to know, I can only opine and speculate." Magruder answered, "I would hope so, John, of course on that meeting, that I have testified that that meeting that we had with Liddy and Mitchell was simply on the general counsel's job and so on. That we just went over the general framework of the job and the new [election] law and those kind of problems." That was as far as Dean could get Jeb to go. Nevertheless, Dean

—

.

.

.

GOLDEN BOY

272

—

later argue to the Watergate committee who were evidently convinced bv his argument and this tape that Magruder had admitted that Dean had no advance knowledge of the break-ins.

would

—

Now that

he had a piece of evidence, Magruder on tape supposedly exonerating him, Dean made his other two critical calls. The second was to Peter Maroulis, Liddy's lawyer. Dean tried to tape that one, as well, but didn't do very well. However, Maroulis did assure

Dean

of the one thing he really wanted to

know

—

wasn't going to talk, no matter what pressure was applied to Sirica or Congress.

shut,

hav^e

if Liddy kept his mouth whole spectrum of events Dean from Sandwedge to

This was good news, for

Dean could promulgate

that could

Liddy him by

that

his version of a

been incriminating to

—

GEMSTONE to the entries into the DNC to the walk in the park of June 19. With Liddy unwilling even to deny Dean's accusations, Dean was safe from assault from that quarter. He would still have Hunt and McCord to fend off, but Dean man who was going to keep his

could ascribe

all

the

evil

doings to the

lips sealed.

Liddy and Magruder in hand. Dean made the third call. In it, he sought and retained counsel for himself, and convinced that counsel to call the prosecutors and tell them the single thing the prosecutors most wanted to hear: that Dean could "deliver the P," that he could implicate the president as a co-conspirator in the sorry mess of Watergate. In other words. Dean wanted his counsel to tell the prosecutors that the lawyer for the president of the United States could and would now throw overboard the last and most important of all the men on the ship,

its

captain. Dean's client, Richard Nixon.

What Dean

did not

the Senate, nor the conspirators

when

tell

his

own

counsel, nor the prosecutors, nor

House Judiciary Committee, nor

they sat

book, nor the avid listeners

down at

in jail together,

his fellow co-

nor the public in his

the hundreds of forums to which

Dean

has lectured in the years since Watergate, was that he threw over

Richard Nixon to prevent his

own deep

criminality

from becoming

known. It

was almost complete, now, the journey of

this

young man from the ambitious, fawning midlevel

who

set off the

astounding series of crimes that

amazingly capable official to

we know

the

man

as Watergate,

to the depths of treachery involved in sabotaging fatally the presidency

of Richard Nixon. After

Dean came down from

the mountain with no report in hand,

he began talking to Silbert and his associates on April 2. The initial conversations were enough to convince Silbert that Dean would have

— The Cancer Within the Presidency

273

major revelations, but Silbert and Dean's counsel disagreed on

much Dean would

reveal in

how

exchange for various degrees of immunity the prosecutors wanted no immunity for

from prosecution. Initially, Dean, and he refused to say much without some sort of protection. By April 14, it had become known in the White House that Dean had retained counsel and the president's inner circle believed that Dean was singing to the prosecutors. Dean was just warming up, though, while his counsel was playing off the prosecutors against the Senate committee, trying to see which group would give his client more immunity from prosecution. Both groups were willing to invest so heavily in Dean and his purported credibility, however, that their entire edifices of allegations actually rested on his proposed testimony.

Though for

Sirica initially rejected the prosecutors' request for

Dean, the Senate embraced the idea. Dean's plan for his testimony was as

of the president and the president's that he

manipulation

brilliant as his

men had

immunity

Dean would say of how he had been

been.

had been complicitous, and paint a picture in the conspiracy because he was so ambitious and eager to

enmeshed

Dean may actually have agreed to take a small fall in the belief that if people knew he was going to go to jail anyway, that would render his story more credible than if he was able to walk away from please.

his crimes.

While Dean's deliberations with the Senate committee and the prosecutors were going on, the president was sinking ever deeper into actions that would hurt him, for instance, his clandestine offer of the directorship of the FBI to Judge Matthew Byrne, who was then presiding over the trial of Daniel Ellsberg. The offer was rejected, but it made a mess of that trial. Ehrlichman had been conducting his own, hurried investigation of Watergate, and on April 14 laid out a body of facts for the president, facts that in Ehrlichman's mind implicated Mitchell, Magruder, and Dean.

He

Dean

urged the president to

couldn't just

sit

act,

because "you can't

there, either,

played one of his best cards.

He

and on April

told

15

just sit here."

—

Silbert of the

a Sunday Liddy-Hunt

supervision of the burglary of Dr. Fielding's office, information that

he

knew would

totally disrupt the

government's case against Ellsberg.

was a busy Sunday. That day, based on their interviews with Dean and Magruder, government prosecutors gave Kleindienst and Petersen a report that implicated Haldeman and Ehrlichman in the cover-up along with the others that Dean had named. Both Kleindienst and Petersen informed Nixon of these matters, with Petersen recomIt

GOLDEN BOY

274

I mending the

firing

of

Haldeman and Ehrlichman, but

the retention of

Dean, since Dean was now cooperating with the prosecutors. Shortly after nine that evening

and

Dean met

the president in his

EOB

he had, indeed, gone to the prosecutors, he had discussed only the roles of various people in the cover-up, including

office

said that while

himself, and that no national security matters had been discussed.

Since Nixon

felt that

to national security,

Next morning,

the Dr. Fielding burglary was definitely related

and Dean knew

Silbert sent a

that, his statement

memo

vision of the Dr. Fielding burglary to

was

a lie.

about the Hunt-Liddy super-

Henry

Petersen,

who phoned

he had received the piece of paper. Nixon bluntly told Petersen to "stay out" of the matter since it involved "national security," and Petersen didn't really respond. (Since the Silbert memo didn't mention that the allegation had come from Dean, no one in the White House yet knew that he was the source of the the president about

it

as

soon

as

information.)

But when the president met briefly with Dean, alone, on April 16, they fenced about. This was not a discussion, but, rather, two men telling one another that this was the parting of the ways; from now on, each would know the other principally as an enemy. Dean told Nixon he had retained counsel, and Nixon proffered him letters of resignation to sign. Dean refused to sign ones that had been prepared and said he'd write his own. It wasn't clear that the resignation would be made public right away, though Haldeman and Ehrlichman were already on record as requesting indefinite leaves of absence and had themselves retained counsel. The thought then current in the White House was that if Dean were to stay on staff, the president could claim the lawyerclient privilege and thereby prevent Dean from squealing. As with so much of the legal thinking done in the White House at the time, this was inaccurate, but no one seemed to understand that, or to suggest that it might be so. Dean told Nixon he would resign only if Haldeman and Ehrlichman also did so, Nixon may have misunderstood this as Dean's attempt to lift himself to the level of importance of those two aides. It had an entirely different meaning for Dean; he wanted Haldeman and Ehrlichman to go at the same time because that would provide support for his claim that they were his principals. He told Nixon, and later told the press, that he would not be a "scapegoat" for Watergate.

Nixon and Dean never again met face to face. the seventeenth Nixon told the press that after "serious charges" Watergate were first made known to him on March 21, he had about ordered another investigation; and Ziegler told the press that all

On

The Cancer Within the Presidency previous White

275

House statements on Watergate were "inoperative"

because they had been based on the earHer investigation, which every-

one now knew referred to Dean's work. In the next fortnight McCord filed suit charging he had been entrapped into his activities, Henry Petersen told the president that the break-in at Dr. Fielding's office

Magruder resigned from Commerce, Gray resigned as acting director of the FBI after admitting that he had destroyed files from Hunt's safe Nixon pronounced himself shocked that Gray would have done such a thing and Ehrlichman admitted to the FBI his knowledge of the Plumbers' activity. In the midst of all this, the president called Dean at home on April 22 to wish him a happy Easter and to both praise Dean and threaten him with the information that the president still considered him his counsel. Henry Petersen was still bothered by the Silbert memo about Hunt, had become known to the grand

jury,

—

—

Liddy, and the Dr. Fielding break-in, and told Attorney General Kleindienst about it. Kleindienst agreed with Petersen and called Nixon on April 25; he threatened to resign if he were not allowed to send to Judge Byrne the Silbert memo and other documents telling what the government knew about the Dr. Fielding break-in, Nixon agreed, and when Judge Byrne got the documents he held a conference with the prosecutors about them; they wanted him to deal with the documents only in camera. Enraged, Byrne read the documents aloud in court on April 27, and made headlines. That day, Nixon asked Ehrlichman "to make up a list for me of all the national-security-related activities that he thought Dean might be able to expose." According to Nixon's autobiography, that

"Ellsberg, the 1969 wiretaps, and the

Pakistan war."

By

list

read,

yeoman episode during the IndoNixon knew that the "Ellsberg"

the end of the day,

material had already reached public consciousness.

It

was the

last

straw.

Judge Byrne, on behalf of the defendants, who believed they had been wiretapped years earlier, had been asking the prosecution for any information concerning "electronic surveillance" on Ellsberg and his

Anthony J. Russo, for some time. The government had said knew nothing of such wiretaps. On Monday, April 30, 1973, in the wake of the revelation of the Hunt-Liddy burglary. Judge Byrne reissued his earlier demand that the government produce any informa-

associate, it

concerning "electronic surveillance." Shortly, the "1969 wiretaps" would be out of the bag. Later that evening. President Nixon went before national television to announce that he was accepting the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, "two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege tion

GOLDEN BOY

276

to

know."

He had

new information on Watergate now pursuing it vigorously. Toward

received

reported, and was

in

March, he

that end, he

was reheving Kleindienst of his responsibihties as attorney general, since he wanted someone who had no previous connection to Haldeman, EhrHchman, Mitchell, or anyone else in the adminstration; that new attorney general, Elliot Richardson, would be empowered to appoint a special prosecutor for Watergate-related matters. So Nixon said he was accepting the resignation of Kleindienst, and announced in the next breath that "the counsel to the President, John Dean, has also resigned."

Nixon had played one last time into Dean's hands, giving Dean fuel Haldeman and EhrHchman were involved in the

for asserting that

conspiracy.

Dean had

Nixon hastened to point out that he was meeting in the next few days on momentous matters having to do with the future of Europe, and that he would shortly have to deal with the enormous problems of Southeast Asia and the "potentially explosive Middle East." To do so would take all of his energy and commitment, and that was why he was going to put Watergate behind him and call on the leaders of both political parties to run better campaigns, and call on the American people to write rules to free future campaigns of the abuses of the past one. Winding up, in his valedictory Nixon pointed out that there were exactly 1,361 days remaining in his term, and that "I want these to be the best days in American history." After announcing that

resigned,

BOOK THREE

EXIT

MPRESIDINT

18

THE RETURN OF

ALEXANDER HAIG

THE associate

espionage and conspiracy

Anthony Russo

days on April 25, 1973,

in the

when

trial

of Daniel Ellsberg and his

Pentagon Papers case was

in its closing

a surprise prosecution witness entered,

took a front-row seat in the Los Angeles courtroom, and created quite

He wore

Army

medals and was Alexander Haig, vice chief of staff of the Army. "Many of the jurors seemed to stare" at those stars and "a nearly full chest of decorations," the next day's story in the Washington Post reported, and The New York Times suggested that "court observers felt that he had been called more for the dazzle of his appearance and background than for the substance of his testimony." Haig took the stand briefly as a government rebuttal witness whose role was to attack the credentials of two defense witnesses, his former NSC colleague Morton Halperin and University of Michigan professor Allen S. Whiting, a former State Department intelligence analyst. In Haig's testimony, writes biographer Roger Morris, he "misrepresented significantly Halperin's role" at the NSC, going so far as to deny that a stir.

a crisp

four polished stars

on

uniform with

his shoulder boards. It

279

a chest full of

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

280

Halperin had been

a

key Kissinger aide

in the early

months of the

first

Nixon administration. Haig

among

also did not testify that

he had known that Halperin was

those wiretapped after the publication of the Pentagon Papers,

nor that he had seen the

had yielded

fruits of the

wiretap on Halperin's phone that

fifteen of Halperin's conversations

with Daniel Ellsberg.

lb reveal that information would have blown the case sky-high, and damaged himself in the process. Haig also denied under oath that he had any evidence that was material to the trial, though it must be pointed out that he was not specifically asked about an EllsbergHalperin tap. As we have shown, such taps were suspected, but Federal Judge Matthew Byrne would not reissue his demand for such evidence until April 30, and that demand would not be answered and the existence of the tap on Halperin revealed until May 8. So when Haig left the courtroom after his thirty-five-minute appearance on April 25, that secret and his role in the wiretapping remained safely hidden.

On April 30, 1973, after the departure of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Dean, the White House was in an uproar. Haldeman convinced a reluctant Nixon that he would need a new chief of staff, and recommended Alexander Haig, someone Nixon already knew and could trust, someone with a penchant for making order out of chaos, a strong man who knew how to shield a boss from unwanted intrusions into his privacy. On May 3 Haig came in for an interview. The Washington Post of May 3 had a story by reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that had the effect of shielding Haig from the wiretap scandal,

just

wiretapping knew

it

was about

at the

was about

moment when to

its

just as Haig White House. The

be publicly exposed, and

to return to considerable

timing of the Post story and

the participants in the

power

contents

in the

demand examination. The

immediate roots of the story went back to late February 1973, when lime magazine broke the news that between 1969 and 1971, "six or seven reporters and an undisclosed number of White House officials" had had their phones wiretapped. In response to the Time story, denials of the wiretapping were immediately issued by the White House and by Pat Gray, whose confirmation hearings on his promotion to permanent director of the F'BI were to open that week. The idea of domestic wiretapping was a notion to make any reporter's editor sit up and take notice. The team of Woodward and Bernstein had been writing on Watergate since the summer of 1972, had kept in close touch with the prosecutors and the FBI, and had developed many other sources. Their most important source was an old and trusted friend of Woodward's, a highly placed government

1

The Return of Alexander Haig official

whom Woodward

would

later

28

dub "Deep Throat" in his and Woodward had consulted

Bernstein's bestseller, All the President's Men.

Deep Throat

often in September and October of 1972, but after that

their meetings

had slackened. In

late

January of 1973 the reporter met

his source once again, and this time, according to All the President's

Men, Deep Throat told Woodward that "[Charles] Colson and [John] Mitchell were behind the Watergate operation," and were the "sponsors" of burglars Hunt and Liddy. Unable to corroborate Deep Throat's story, Woodward and Bernstein did not publish it. But with the Time wiretap story in late February, the Post had been scooped, and Woodward immediately contacted Deep Throat. According to All the President's Men, Woodward and Deep Throat met, at Deep Throat's request, in "an old wooden house which had been converted into a saloon for truckers and construction workers." Over scotch, Deep Throat described Nixon's "rampage about news leaks on Watergate. Nixon was wild, shouting and hollering that 'we can't have it and we're going to stop it, I don't care how much it .

costs.' "

The

.

.

discussion

moved

into the matter of the just-published

Time report. Deep Throat confirmed that there had been wiretapping, but characterized it as having been conducted by an "out-of-channels

and said that the targets had included taps on Hedrick Smith and Neil Sheehan of The New York Times in the wake of that newspaper's publication of the Pentagon Papers. The records had been "destroyed," Deep Throat assured Woodward, but said that the "outof-channels" people had included "ex-FBI and ex-CIA agents" and had been supervised at Justice by Robert xVlardian. Deep Throat's description of the 1969-1971 wiretapping was a mixture of partial truths and of information so distorted that it smacked of deliberate misdirection. Throat was correct in implying that Hunt and Liddy had been involved in buggings their names and biographies were public knowledge from their just-concluded trial, and their identities could be easily deduced from Throat's description of "ex-FBI and ex-CIA agents." But they had had nothing to do with the 1969-

vigilante squad,"

—

1971 wiretaps. Throat was also

wrong

in regard to

Mardian's supervi-

Sheehan had been tapped, and in his characterization of the operation as a rogue escapade. It has been shown that the wiretapping was initiated at the highest levels by Nixon, Kissinger, and J. Edgar Hoover, supervised by Haig and William Sullivan at the FBI, and condoned by Attorney General Mitchell. In the tavern session with Woodward, Deep Throat alleged that Haldeman had spurred a "reluctant" Mitchell to "move part of the vigilante operation from the White House to the campaign," and sion, in saying

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

282

ex-FBI man Liddy and the ex-CIA man Hunt went before that transfer and that came after it. This allegation distracts the reporter by focusing his attention on Liddy and Hunt, and suggests that they, rather than the actual perpetrators, had organized the wiretapping operation. Deep Throat summarized it all for Woodward: stressed the roles of the in everything that

"In 1969, the

and those

Throat

first

targets of aggressive wiretapping

in the administration

"Then

said.

who were

was only natural

Deep

the emphasis was shifted to the radical political

opposition during the anti-war protests. it

were the reporters

suspected of disloyalty,"

to tap the

When

Democrats.

The

it

got near election time,

arrests in the

Watergate

sent everybody off the edge because the break-in could uncover the

whole program."

Deep Throat married the "national securcampaign intelligence operation, and attributed Liddy and Hunt, thereby effectively covering over the traces of

In one grand statement. ity" wiretapping to the it all

to

NSC

involvement in the early wiretapping.

Returning from his tavern rendezvous, Wbodward talked with Bernstein the next

morning. They wanted to print the information from

Deep Throat,

but, unable to find a second source, they did not publish

it

just then.

Nine weeks

at their height,

later,

when

the Ellsberg

trial

they published on the morning of

revelations

May

3

were

—when Haig

was on the threshold of the president's door. In Haig's interview with Nixon, he accepted the position of chief of staff in the White House. He would start the very next day. May 4. Haig would now wield power in a way that had not been possible when he had been an NSC deputy. Now Haig could eclipse Kissinger and become that "new breed" of soldier and that single presidential adviser whose appearance on the horizon he had foreseen and recommended in his master's thesis eleven years before.

Many

people have tried to pinpoint the identity of

reporters' earlier book, All the President's

identity have been led astray

Men, and

from the

real

Deep Throat

in

in the

pursuing Throat's

story, that of the joint

involvement of Bob Woodward, the Navy briefer-turned-reporter, and Alexander Haig, the man he often briefed at the White House, in the

complex tragicomedy we have come to know as Watergate. Our philosophy in the following pages and chapters will be not to chase Deep Throat through the dramatizations in All the President's Men the flowerpot and marked-up newspapers that Woodward and Deep Throat

—

The Return of Alexander Haig

283

supposedly used to signal one another, and the darkened parking garage where Woodward claims he and his source met. Rather, we will trace

Bob Woodward and Alexander Haig, and had to the removal of Richard Nixon from

the activities of relevance those

see

what

the presi-

dency of the United States, and thereby understand why the Deep Throat cover has shielded both men for nearly two decades. The fortunes of Deep Throat, of Alexander Haig, and of Bob Woodward had been intertwined since hours after the break-in of June 17, 1972.

DNC

When the five burglars were arrested at headquarters that morning, word of the foiled burglary quickly reached the Washington Post. Joe Califano, who had become general counsel of the Democratic National Committee, as well as one of the lawyers for the Post, called the

managing

editor,

who phoned

the metropolitan editor. Both editors

agreed this was more than a routine police story, and that day nine

work on various aspects of the case, including neophyte Bob Woodward. At the time, former Navy officer Woodward had been at the Post only nine months, following a year at the weekly paper, the Montgomery County Sentinel, in suburban Maryland. He was a staff reporter assigned to metropolitan Washington stories that is, matters not considered of national importance but Woodward had worked extremely hard and had earned praise for some enterprising local reporting. When Woodward arrived at the newsroom that morning after the break-in, it was buzzing with activity. There Carl Bernstein, who usually covered Virginia politics, had photocopied the notes of other reporters at the scene and was working the telephones, trying to dig up more informareporters were at

—

—

tion.

Woodward and

Bernstein were young at the time

—Woodward was

twenty-nine, Bernstein, twenty-eight. According to All the President's

when they

working together. Woodward and Bernstein didn't like one another. Bernstein thought the former Yale and Navy man hadn't covered "enough pavement for him to be good at investigative reporting." Moreover, "Bernstein knew that Woodward couldn't write very well. One office rumor had it that English was not Woodward's native language." Conversely, the book declared that Bernstein, a college dropout who had begun at the Washington Star as a copyboy and had been a reporter at the Post since 1966, "looked like

Men,

first

started

one of those counterculture journalists that Woodward despised." On Sunday, June 18, the Associated Press wire service named James McCord as "security coordinator" for the Nixon reelection committee, and there was a statement from John Mitchell acknowledg-

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

284

ing that link but denying that the burglars had acted

on behalf of the CRP. That same day, Woodward and Bernstein wrote their first joint byline story, which appeared on Monday, that combined this wire service information with some more personal details about McCord's background. In the early hours of xMonday, June 19, 1972, Washington Post night

Eugene Bachinski was allowed by one of

police reporter

his police

sources to inspect address books seized from burglars Barker and

Howard Hunt and his "W.H." and was told about the check from Hunt in Barker's

Martinez, found the cryptic notation of link in those books,

belongings. to

An

assistant editor told Bachinski to pass the information

Bob Woodward. According to All

the

President's

Men, Woodward, searching for

information on Hunt, "called an old friend and sometimes source

who

for the federal government" and did not like to be called at his "His friend said hurriedly that the break-in case was going to 'heat up,' but he couldn't explain and hung up." Later in the game, Wbodward would label this "old friend" Deep Throat, and rely on him almost exclusively for investigative leads. He would describe Deep Throat in All the President's Men as a "source in the Executive Branch who had access to information at CRP as well as the White House," whose position was "extremely sensitive," and that what he knew "represented an aggregate of hard information flowing in and out of many stations." Woodward boasted that his friendship with Deep Throat was "genuine, not cultivated," and went on to explain it:

worked office.

Long before Watergate, they had spent many evenings Washington, the government, power.

Throat had talked about how

government

—

a

On

politics

talking about

Deep

evenings such as those.

had

infiltrated every

corner of

strong-arm takeover of the agencies by the Nixon White

House. Junior White House aides were giving orders on the highest levels

of the bureaucracy.

mentality"

He had once

—and had referred

to fight dirty

called

it

the "switchblade

to the willingness of the President's

and for keeps, regardless of what

effect the slashing

men

might

have on the government and the nation.

Woodward considered Deep Throat

"a wise teacher," but one

"distrusted the press" and "detested" newspapers.

own "weaknesses," among them that he was who was "fascinated" by rumor and who was concealing his feelings, hardly ideal for a man in his

that his old friend had his

an "incurable gossip" "not good at position."

who

Woodward wrote mk

The Return of Alexander Haig As an

official in a

and

Deep Throat would not Woodward unless he trusted him

highly sensitive position,

have talked to the neophyte reporter implicitly,

285

their conversations of ""long before" (italics

added) had

Woodward had held three Navy officer, one year on a

apparentlv assured him about Woodward. jobs in his adult

life

—

five

years as a

suburban weekly newspaper, and nine months

at

the Washington Post

assigned to the metropolitan desk. Given the trust displayed by

Throat

in his dealings

with Woodward,

that the relationship could have developed

it

is

Deep

virtually inconceivable

anywhere but the Navy.

It

was in the Navy that Woodward had held the trusted role of briefer and in that capacity had briefed, among others, Alexander Haig. The subject of the old conversations between Deep Throat and Woodward, and Woodward's descriptions of his friend, echo experiences Haig had been through in the White House, and, perhaps more important, they echo some of the phrases and concerns about the overwhelming civilian influence in national affairs detailed in the master's thesis that

own

Haig's

On

June

source that

became

blueprint for achieving and understanding power.

Woodward received a virtual confirmation from his Hunt was, indeed, connected to the White House this 19,

—

was the implied message of Woodward's "friend" in the warning that the case was going to heat up. Woodward then did some good spade work. Calling the White House directly, he learned that Hunt was on Colson's staff, but could be reached at the public relations firm Robert R. Mullen & Company. Woodward dialed the Mullen firm and when Hunt picked up his phone. Woodward identified himself as a reporter and asked Hunt why his name was in the address books of two

"Good God!" Hunt exclaimed, then told Woodward he would say nothing more, and hung up. A call to Robert

Watergate burglars.

Bennett, Hunt's boss at Mullen, obtained the admission, "I guess

it's

no secret that Howard was with the CIA"; and a call to CIA headquarters confirmed Hunt's employment there from 1949 to 1970. Having received all this information, "Woodward didn't know what to think," the reporters' book narrated, and so he "placed another call to his government friend and asked for advice." Deep Throat told

Woodward

that the

FBI regarded Hunt

as a

prime suspect "for many

reasons aside from the address-book entries and unmailed check," and

assured

Woodward

would be "nothing unfair" about a story book and the check. Woodward and Bachinski

that there

that reported the address

put some but not

all

bylines, published

on June

It

was good

of this information into a story with both their 20.

stuff, a veritable

scoop; moreover,

it

impressed people

within the Post hierarchy by announcing that junior reporter

Woodward

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

286

unexpectedly had a well and highly placed source willing to tell him inside material about a major political development. That raised Woodward's stock within the newspaper enough to obtain for

him an

assignment to continue covering the Watergate case. The junior resomewhat of a porter became the Posfs day-to-day Watergate man

—

—

promotion from "metro" matters, to be sure but in the next few weeks his reportage yielded only straight news accounts or summaries of legal and political developments of the case. On his own, he found no revelatory information. After the initial calls. Deep Throat had been petulant with Woodward, according to All the President's Men, and the source remained silent for some time. By July, David Halberstam wrote in his media study, The Powers That Be, the Post "seemed to be slowing down on the story." Bernstein had been sent back to his beat and Woodward was assigned to other stories besides

for instance.

Watergate

When

Howard Simons,

—the Nixon administration's antidrug

effort,

Executive Editor Ben Bradlee was on vacation, and

managing

was

Simons, according to Halberstam, "was bothered by what was not happening on the [while] Woodward alone was assigned to it." The Watergate story Post was being scooped by its rivals, including The New York Times. the

.

.

editor,

in charge,

.

Simons decided the paper needed a two-man team, and that the reporters should be Wbodward and Carl Bernstein. Over the summer, Bernstein doggedly pursued leads and came up with important information tying

On

CRP funds

to the burglars.

September 7, 1972, Nixon awarded Alexander Haig his fourth star and nominated him to become a full general and vice chief of staff of the Army, the number-two job in that service. Haig was to be vaulted entirely over the three-star rank and over 240 more-senior officers to cap his meteoric rise through the officer corps. However, as a condition to Haig's promotion, Nixon required Haig to stay at the White House until after the election, and after the next round of negotiations on ending the war in Vietnam. As it turned out, Haig would end up staying in the White House and continuing to play a prominent role, nominally as Kissinger's deputy, until he left for the Pentagon in early January of 1973. The weeks immediately following Haig's award of his fourth star were among the most fruitful in the Deep Throat-Woodward relationship. Haig had been Kissinger's deputy for four years. By the fall of 1972, Kissinger and he were full-fledged rivals, and Haig could rise no further in the White House hierarchy. Once elevated to the rank of full general, though, Haig was in position to be considered for the post of

I

I

I

The Return of Alexander Haig

287

chairman of the Joint Chiefs. In nine months, Admiral Moorer was scheduled to retire, and Nixon would be able to appoint his successor. Haig would be a prime candidate if the military would accept him. That might be difficult, because there was no doubt in the minds of Haig's high-ranking military peers that Haig had risen to four stars because he was a favorite of the civilian politician who happened to be the president. Haig needed to deal with this perception. Haig knew many of the most closely held secrets of the Nixon White House the 1969-1971 wiretaps, the formation of the Plumbers, the details of Moorer- Radford, and the foreign policy initiatives made through the military backchannel. Deep Throat had sat on the sidelines for three months, saying nothing about Watergate during the summer, Wbodward and Bernstein wrote in All the President's Men, when in mid-September of 1972 he suddenly became a major player. Bernstein had been able to find a CRP bookkeeper who provided the first details but no documentary proof that CRP money had been used to finance the Watergate

—

—

—

—

bugging. Bernstein also managed to crack Stans's deputy

who

divulged more clues.

On

September

Hugh

Sloan,

day after the indictments of Hunt, Liddy, and the burglars were announced. Woodward telephoned Deep Throat and told him what Bernstein had uncovered. Deep Throat confirmed that the secret campaign fund had not only 16, the

financed the Watergate bugging but also

''other

intelligence-gathering

(Emphasis in original.) He further volunteered that wiretap logs from the bugging had gone to some of the same John Mitchell aides who had disbursed the funds. This confirmation and its confidential, anonymous source became the meat of the Wbodward and Bernstein story, published on Sunday, September 17, that revealed the use of campaign funds to bug the DNC. As we can see in retrospect, this story also revealed that Deep Throat was not tied directly to the CRP, for his information about who saw what in the committee was fuzzy and reflective of the thinking in activities.'"

the

White House camp

story that

at that time.

That thinking was

Woodward checked with Deep Throat

also tipped in a

the following day,

CRP employee; Throat told and Magruder were "deeply involved," and Throat was "explicit in saying the withdrawals [of campaign funds] financed the Watergate bugging." Actually, Porter was only peripherally involved in funding Liddy, but a source at the White House

one that implicated Bart Porter, another

Woodward

wouldn't

that Porter

know

that.

According to Woodward his next conversation with Deep Throat several weeks later, on October 9. This was four davs after John

came

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

288

Bob Haldeman his Hghthearted memo about his impending marriage to Maureen Biner. Woodward and Deep Throat were

Dean had

sent

no longer conversing by telephone; in the fall of 1972, according to All the President's Men, they had arranged dramatic 2:00 a.m. trysts in an underground parking garage. If Woodward wanted a meeting, says the book, he would signal Deep Throat by moving a flowerpot on his apartment balcony, and if Deep Throat wanted a meeting he would scribble a message inside the morning newspaper at Woodward's front door.

Bernstein had developed material about the dirty tricks activities of

Woodward wanted to confirm. Barely stopping on his cigarette. Deep Throat told Woodward in the garage more of what he had alluded to in September, the extent of the Nixon campaign's intelligence-gathering activities. Throat said that "fifty people worked for the White House and CRP to play games and spy and sabotage and gather intelligence," that the November Group which had handled campaign advertising was involved in the dirty tricks, and that the targets included Republican contributors as well as Democratic candidates. He also said that Mitchell was behind the Watergate breakin and other illegal activities, and that for ten days after the break-in, Howard Hunt had been assigned to help Mitchell conduct an investiDonald

Segretti that

for drags

gation of Watergate.

This information was wildly inaccurate in many particulars, for number of people in campaign intelligence, and Hunt's role in the cover-up. But Deep Throat's disclosures reflected White instance, the

House thinking

in the fall of 1972, insofar as

it

related to Mitchell's

role in the break-in. If

Deep Throat was Haig, why would he release a flood of inforsome of it clearly inaccurate at this time? In the fall of 1972,

mation

—

—

Nixon was riding high as a result of major success in his foreign policy and arms control initiatives, including the antiballistic missile and SALT treaties with the Soviet Union and the China opening. These initiatives had been opposed by the military as giving too much away to the Russians and the Chinese. At the time of the October 10 Post article, Haig was scheduled to leave the White House to assume the position of vice chief of staff of the Army and Nixon was on his way to an unprecedented landslide reelection victory that would give him even more power in the foreign policy arena. Revelations of the dirty practices of the Nixon campaign as reported in the Post would have the effect of weakening Nixon's postelection influence, a desirable outcome to someone seeking a greater role for the military and a dampening of Nixon's secret diplomacy. Whether or not Deep

I

hroat

knew

that

I

The Return of Alexander Haig some of the information given

to

Woodward was

289

inaccurate, the inac-

him as WoodDeep Throat, however, was that his purpose had been served tarring Nixon before the election. Wbodward had a great need for Deep Throat's information. Deep Throat's revelations were Woodward's way to vault to the forefront of curacies did serve to cover the

trail

that could identify

ward's source. Most important to

—

investigative reporters

by having

a confidential

source

who

divulged

Deep Throat was key to the realization of journalistic ambitions. If Deep Throat was Haig, he and Wbodward were engaged in a high-stakes game in which confidentiality was essential to Haig especially, for if Nixon knew information to him and to him alone. For Woodward,

—

was leaking damaging stories to a man who had briefed Haig in the basement of the White House in 1969-1970, even that fourth star would not be enough to protect the general from the president's well-known wrath. T) secure the post of vice chief of the Army, Haig had to go through October 1972 Senate confirmation hearings, and for these Fred Buzhardt served as his personal counsel. No hard questions were asked, and Haig was confirmed. However, as explained earlier, he did not immediately take up his new post, for Nixon asked him to remain in the White House to participate in the last round of discussions with the North Vietnamese. This was when Henry Kissinger made his oftquoted remark that "peace is at hand," a prophesy that helped carry the election for Nixon, but that soon was transmuted into a mocking cry because no peace treaty was then signed. Haig accompanied Kissinger to the Paris negotiations, but on his return to the White House he privately warned Nixon of a "murderous bloodbath" that would ensue if a ceasefire was forced on the South Vietnamese. Admiral Zumwalt records in his memoir that Haig, reflecting the sentiment of the JCS, told Nixon that Kissinger "was going too far and giving up too much." According to Zumwalt's notes, Haig "got himself alone with the President Kissinger doesn't know this," and succeeded in getting Nixon to slow down the troop withdrawals. By Christmas, when Nixon bombed Hanoi, he did so with the open advocacy of Haig, who was now in clear revolt against Kissinger on that and other matters. Haig did not transfer his office to the Pentagon until January 4, 1973. Afterward, Nixon continued to beckon him to the Oval Office that his trusted general

—

about foreign policy. In February, the president sent Haig on yet another private mission to Vietnam and to Cambodia. Around that time the Time magazine story about the 1969-1971

for discussions

wiretapping broke, leading to

Woodward and Deep

Throat's rendez-

— EXIT THE PRESIDENT

290

vous in the truckers' tavern. As

were not printed

until the

The Woodward and sources

in'

we

have seen, the fruits of that meeting

morning of May

3,

the executive branch confirmed that the telephones of "at

two newspaper reporters" were tapped

least

1973.

Bernstein article said that two highly placed

tion's investigation of the publication of the

in the

Nixon administra-

Pentagon Papers, and that

these taps were "supervised by Watergate conspirators E.

Hunt,

Jr.,

Howard

and Gordon Liddy," whose "vigilante squad" was not part

of the FBI (the agency usually charged with legal wiretapping responsibilities)

but "was authorized" by Mitchell.

It

said that

all

records of

had been destroyed, repeated that this wiretapping was essentially different from the one reported earlier by Time, in that it was expressly not run by the FBI, and that "the only wiretapping of reporters and White House aides known to the Posfs sources" was done by vigilantes Hunt and Liddy, who "were regularly routed information obtained from national security wiretaps." In their book, Woodward and Bernstein were deliberately vague about their second source for this information, and all signs point to the notion that it came solely from Deep Throat, for any other source would have challenged the details that we know to have been false. Recently, Gordon Liddy reread that May 3 story, and states unequivthat wiretapping

ocally that

A

it is

"a total fraud.

There

seemingly inconsequential sentence with

is

not a word of truth to

third clue as to the source of the information

why

in All the President's

it."

comes from

Men

a

that deals

the reporters "decided to go" with the story in May, after

it since February. They had not printed the story because they had been unable to confirm from any other source the names of the New York Times reporters as subjects of the wiretaps. But, by the beginning of May, "They did find, however, that there was a possibility that Fllsberg had been overheard on a tap." I'his fact was not included in the May 3 story itself; indeed, if it had been, there would have been quite an uproar, for it was just this confirmation of Fllsberg as a subject of the taps that William D.

holding

Ruckelshaus,

was

who had

replaced Pat Gray as acting director of the FBI,

frantically searching for in the days after

April 30 directive that the government search

Judge Matthew Byrne's its files

for evidence of

wiretaps of Daniel Fllsberg. That evidence was not found until

May

8.

But Woodward and Bernstein wrote that they knew of it before May 3, which means that someone in the know must have told them most likely, Deep Fhroat. Those who had actually seen the Morton Halperin tap logs on which Fllsberg was overheard included Kissinger, Sullivan, and Haig, and it was possible that Nixon, I laldeman, F.hrlich-

1

The Return of Alexander Haig

29

man, Mitchell, and Mardian could have known about them, along with Bernard Wells, a supervisor for the FBI's domestic intelligence division, and those FBI agents who had actually monitored the taps. In other sections of their book, the reporters freely acknowledged their particular FBI sources, and that they do not attribute this information on the overhearing of Ellsberg to the FBI suggests that Wells and the field agents did not leak it. Actually, Sullivan, who had left the FBI, helped Ruckelshaus locate the logs. Sullivan would not have known intimately the "switchblade mentality" of the White House that Deep Throat described to Woodward. If Woodward and Bernstein are to be believed, Sullivan could not have been Deep Throat because he died in the 1970s, and the reporters say Deep Throat is still alive. Mardian, Mitchell, Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman would not have given the information to the reporters because it was damaging to them. But Kissinger or Haig could have volunteered it, especially packaged in a way so as to lead the reporters away from the NSC. However, Kissinger did not know Woodward, and it can safely be presumed that on May 2, 1973, two days after the firestorm in which Haldeman and Ehrlichman had just resigned and Dean and Kleindienst had been fired, Henry Kissinger would not take a call from a reporter he didn't know or trust to blithely confirm one of the darkest secrets of the Nixon years. By a process of elimination, the most logical candidate to have delivered the knowledge of the Halperin-Ellsberg tap to Woodward at that moment in time was Alexander Haig.

On May as

if

4, 1973,

he were

—

a

Haig

settled into the job of

commander

White House chief of staff

taking charge of a besieged military

he even continued to wear his general's uniform for a while. During that week, the wiretap scandal broke wide open. William Ruckelshaus spurred his men and they finally located the wiretap logs in the White House safe that had belonged to John Ehrlichman. The existence of those logs was conveyed to Judge Byrne, who used them as the basis for dismissing the case against Ellsberg and Russo, and on

outpost

May

14,

Ruckelshaus was able to

tell

the public that

some seventeen

persons in and out of the government had been wiretapped over a period of twenty-two

months during 1969-1971. But Haig's

role in the

wiretapping remained hidden.

During that week, Haig flew to Florida to join Nixon and his friends Bebe Rebozo and Robert Abplanalp as well as the visiting John Connally. Nixon held in high regard the former Texas governor, who had recently switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republi-

292

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

can, and asked Connallv to serve as a general adviser in the

White

House. Connallv accepted, but didn't stay long. In 1969, Haig had successfully pushed out all his rivals in the Kissinger NSC; in 1973, he used the same tactics vanquishing and freezing out rivals, confiscating bureaucratic power to stake out a position as the guardian to Nixon's door that made Haldeman's earlier lock-out techniques look tame by comparison. Ron Ziegler had told

— —

members would not have to go as they had done when Haldeman

the press that in the future cabinet

through Haig to see the president, was in charge; that sop to liberalization soon went by the boards. On returning from Florida to Washington on May 8, Haig made a move that helped ensure his success as chief of staff: He asked Fred Buzhardt to come into the White House to assist Nixon's former law partner Leonard Garment in handling the president's defense. Buzhardt and Haig had been associated for a quarter-century, and were bound together by shared secrets. Both knew of the buried

Moorer-Radford reports and the two Admiral Welander confessions; the second one, elicited by Buzhardt, eliminated significant references to Haig from a confession by a major participant in the spying conducted by Yeoman Radford. Nixon knew that Haig and Buzhardt were old friends. He did not know about the second Welander confession, or that the two men had a real need to conceal the significant remarks about Haig in Welander's first confession. After sacking Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Nixon biographer Roger Morris told us, the president was "so confused and generally at sea I think it [was] mentally and psychologically impossible for him to do what's necessary," Thus impaired, the president was putty in the hands of those he trusted and who he hoped would save him from the accusations of John Dean, which he expected would be lobbed at him shortly in front of Sam Ervin's Senate committee and a television audience of millions.

Haig and Buzhardt sat down with Nixon on May 9, and it was agreed that Buzhardt would maintain his current position as general counsel to the Department of Defense while he moonlighted at the White House, helping to direct the president's legal defense together with Len Ciarment. As general counsel to the Defense Department, Buzhardt retained control of his confidential Pentagon files, which included both Welander confessions as well as various reports on the Moorer-Radfi)rd matter by Don Stewart, David Young, and by Buzhardt himself. Thus, in tying Buzhardt ever more closely to himself in the Nixon White House, Haig kept his old friend and those crucial files within his effective

The Return of Alexander Haig

293

The final person with knowledge dangerous to Haig was also brought under Haig's control in June, when former defense secretary Mel Laird was hired by the White House as a counselor. Laird had resigned at the close of Nixon's first term, and had never gotten along very well with the president, but Buzhardt and Haig wanted Laird around. Laird, too, knew of the two Welander interviews and of Haig's relationship with Robinson and Welander at the time their yeoman was spying for the military. By having him nearby, Haig neutralized Laird. White House logs show that after Laird's appointment he rarely met reach.

with Nixon, and

when he

did

it

was almost always

in the

presence of

Haig.

The same

thing happened with Garment. Buzhardt's arrival re-

Once Buzhardt arrived. Garment did not Nixon for an entire month, and afterward only saw him about once a month, generally in concert with other lawyers. Garment recalls that he "wanted to go in" and see the president alone, but "the door was blocked. Haig trusted Buzhardt and not me. My access [to There were Nixon] was basically, I went in and talked to Haig. times I just couldn't go in to see [Nixon]." Garment thinks that Nixon believed that Buzhardt was better equipped to defend him because Buzhardt "knew everybody in Congress," and also because Nixon felt "he was tougher than I was." Under Haig, Larry Higby recalls, the day-to-day operation of the White House changed dramatically from what it had been under Higby's former boss, Haldeman. Higby told us that "The changes were fundamentally that Al controlled everything everybody and everything." Whereas Haldeman had acted as a "general manager and coordinator as well as a personal adviser," Higby contends that Haldeman never blocked people from seeing the president, particularly sulted in Garment's eclipse. see

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

—

Kissinger or Ehrlichman, and actually interceded to urge the president

men. "Bob [Haldeman] would often just glance at the stuff Henry was putting in or John was putting in or anybody else. Whereas Al tightly controlled each and every thing. I mean Al got much heavier involved in policy. Al was trying to manage the whole thing

to see these

.

.

.

personally."

Haig's heavy hand

meshed with the increasingly

difficult

heighten Nixon's isolation. Often the president would

sit

times to

alone in his

with a fire roaring and the air-conditioner running, a yellow and pencil in hand, unwilling to see anyone. Stephen B. Bull, who served as a scheduler and later as a special assistant to Nixon during his entire presidency and also after his resignation, says that "The irony of Richard Nixon is that he had little trust in a lot of

office,

tablet

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

294

much

people, and he put too

trust in too

few people.

.

.

.

When

the

world started closing in ... it was quite convenient for [Nixon] to deal with Haig on a lot of matters and a lot of areas in which Haig really wasn't qualified." Bull remains angry at Haig, not because they were rivals, but because he viewed Haig as looking out for himself over

Nixon.

The second Woodward and Bernstein book. The Final Days, paints of a Haig who did not want to be everything to the president,

a picture

and did not want

Nixon

to get

into trouble. Bull saw precisely the

opposite behavior on Haig's part during Bull's tenure as the day-to-day administrator of the president's office from February 1973 through the

August 1974 Nixon resignation.

He watched

with dismay

as

Haig

"allowed the president to be isolated and indeed perhaps encouraged

White House logs of the president's last fifteen months in office show Haig and Ziegler as the aides most often let into the inner sanctum with the president. To Bull, in those fifteen months, Haig motivated by self-aggrandizement, rather than seemed "duplicitous it."

.

.

.

ideology or principle."

When

Haig learned

made without

the table with his

of

staff.

I

at a staff

meeting of

had been

a decision that

consulting him. Bull recalls that Haig "began pounding

make

fist

all

.

.

.

and

said

two or three times, White House.'

the decisions in the

'I am the chief We thought he

was crazy." Such outbursts would characterize Haig's responses even to decisions made on nonpolicy matters such as the president's daily schedule. According to Bull, Haig at one point said, "If you think that you are this president can run the country without Al Haig .

.

.

mistaken." Haig's arrogance masked his insecurity. On one working trip to San Clemente, he complained to Bull about the quarters he had been given, and snapped that Haldeman would not have been so badly treated. Colonel Jack Brennan, another military aide to Nixon who had also

been

a colleague

and

a friend

of Haig's at the

NSC,

said, "there wasn't

him" among the White House staffers that there had been for Haldeman. "Haig did not have the capability or the confidence to run the White House the way Haldeman did, yet he tried to," Brennan says. Moreover, Haig kept deprecating Nixon to the staff, Brennan recalls that Haig would say to the staff, " 'We're in trouble, we're really in trouble,' and would cast some disparaging remarks about the president. It was like he was saying, i'm the hero around here. And this guy [Nixon] doesn't know what he's doing.' It was that kind of attitude." It was not a new attitude, either, for Haig had evidenced it while working really the respect for

The Return of Alexander Haig

295

—

deputy he would deprecate Nixon to Kissinger, and Kissinger to Nixon. According to Woodward and Bernstein in The Final Days, published long after Nixon's resignation, "Haig sometimes referred to the President as an inherently weak man who lacked guts. He joked that Nixon and Bebe Rebozo had a homosexual relationship, imitating what he called the President's limp-wrist manner." Among those who worked with Haig under Nixon, some remain Haig's admirers. Press Secretary Ron Ziegler is one. "There was nothing in my frequent dealings with Al that would have ever led me to feel that he was anything but dealing with President Nixon in an as Kissinger's

honorable fashion." Ziegler's

comment

deserves considerable weight

because he knew that shortly after Haig's

dump him

arrival,

Haig had

tried to

as press secretary in order to restore the credibility of the

press office that had been

damaged by being forced many times

that

spring to retract earlier statements about Watergate as "inoperative."

Few volunteers could be found;

staying on after surviving the intended

purge, Ziegler nonetheless

"comfortable" in the belief that Haig

felt

was "leveling with me and with the president." He reminds us that those were difficult times in which "you're not thinking about distrusting someone even though you are surrounded by distrust."

Nixon

clearly trusted

Haig and became dependent on him. But Haig

him of the

relationship

enjoyed with the principal Watergate reporter.

Bob Woodknown

did not trust Nixon, certainly not enough to

Haig

still

tell

ward, and not enough to even apprise the president that he had

Woodward

since the

young

lieutenant had

come

over from Admiral

Moorer's office to brief Haig in the White House basement in 1969-70.

To have given Nixon knowledge of even the smallest part of that Haig connection to the press would have meant curtains for Haig as Nixon's chief of staff for precisely the reasons Ziegler cites, the need to be able to trust your close companions in time of battle. According to such men as Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Ziegler, and Mitchell, there is no question that Nixon was deeply bothered by Woodward's and Bernstein's reporting. Through Ron Ziegler and through another press aide, David Gergen (a former Yale classmate of Woodward's), Nixon had sent warnings to Woodward and Bernstein as recendy as April 27, 1973, that as the White House tape of the Nixon-Ziegler conversation put it "they better watch their damned cotton-picking faces" about what they said regarding the current state of mind at the White House. And there is no question, either, that Nixon was not aware of Woodward's background. Before John Mitchell's death, when we informed him of Woodward's Navy career and particular

—

— —

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

296

that he had been a briefer to Haig in 1969-1970, Mitchell took that

information to Nixon, and reported back to us that "Nixon had no idea" of this and was "quite surprised" to hear

it.

we requested

Through interviews with Nixon repeatedly over a three-year period and were refused, on the basis that Nixon did not want to discuss anything having to do with Alexander Haig. That refusal strained Nixon's relationship with Mitchell, and strengthened Mitchell's belief that Nixon was refusing to face what had actually happened during the Watergate crisis. the former attorney general,

A ties to

second Haig alliance also was unknown to the president: Haig's Joe Califano, who had been Haig's patron ten years earlier in the Califano was

hierarchy of the Pentagon.

civilian

now

a

power

in

Democratic circles because of his status as a senior official in the Kennedv and Johnson administrations, his current employment as counsel to both the DNC and the Washington Post, and his partnership in the Washington law firm headed by Edward Bennett Williams. Williams had personal friendships with Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee and owner Katharine Graham, and was one of the "enemies"

named

specifically

planned to

"fix"

in several of the

Califano during the tense months

according to

White House tapes

whom Nixon

after he had been reelected. Haig stayed in touch with

Woodward and

at the close

of the Nixon presidency,

Bernstein in The Final Days, for instance,

having dinner with Califano for advice about Haig's prospective

mony

before the Senate Watergate committee.

Califano helped to

recommend Leon Jaworski

testi-

Equally important, to

Haig

as

Special

Prosecutor, and sometimes acted as an intermediary between them. will provide

We

an additional perspective on the Haig-Jaworski relationship

in a later chapter.

When Haig May who May

and Buzhardt took

command

of Nixon's defense in early

1973, the president had one Watergate preoccupation: John Dean,

the president

knew was about

to

4, in a highly publicized action.

handed

to

Judge John

Dean claimed

become

Sirica the keys to a safe-deposit

to have placed classified

out of the White

I

his principal accuser.

On

Dean's attorney Charles Schaffer

documents

box in which had spirited

that he

louse before his forced resignation of April 30. Press

speculation was that the documents implicated the president and his

top aides in criminal activities. Nixon's anxiety increased as he won-

dered what Dean might have

One

in that safe-deposit box.

of the documents in the box was described to be forty-three

pages long, and this enabled Buzhardt, with his extensive contacts in the departments of Defense and Justice, to quickly figure out that

Dean

The Return of Alexander Haig had taken the 1970 Huston Plan. Nixon later wrote document would undoubtedly prove sensational and

297 that though this politically

dam-

aging, he was "almost relieved that this was Dean's bombshell docu-

ment," because although he had initially approved it, that approval had been rescinded five days later (at the urging of John xVlitchell), and so "I was certain that we could completely defend and explain it in a way that people would understand." The most important thing in Nixon's mind was that this document had nothing to do with his series of private discussions with Dean about Watergate. While this tempest in a teapot was alternately heating up and cooling, the search for the 1969-1971 wiretap logs was continuing, a

hunt that was coming toward the W^hite House and Ehrlichman's safe, in which the documents resided. As we have shown earlier, those documents were very bad news for Al Haig, and he must have been concerned as the search for them drew ever closer. It was in this atmosphere that Haig's old friend Lieutenant General Vernon Walters, deputy director of the CIA, arrived at the White House on May 12, 1973, with one more document that could prove dangerous to the White House, this one drawn from the CIA's files. May 10, 1973, had been a tumultuous day at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia. Dr. James R. Schlesinger, director of the Agency for only four months, who had replaced Richard Helms in January, was about to leave his post. As part of an overall shake-up of the administration announced by the White House, Schlesinger had been

nominated as the new secretary of defense. The previous day Schlesinger had cabled his deputy, Walters, to fly home immediately from Taiwan, and on May 10 Walters walked into the office. Even though the Watergate committee hearings had not yet begun, two other senatorial inquiries that touched upon the CIA's possible involvement in Watergate were in full swing. The CIA was concerned about questions being asked by the Senate Armed Services Committee and a Senate appropriations subcommittee. Walters and Helms were going to be called to testify to at least one of these forums. According to Walters' memoir, on his return Schlesinger asked him to prepare an affidavit about Watergate and W^alters knew he had just the materials at hand, his four "memcons" written the previous June after his discussions with John Dean, the first of which included notes of the four-way meeting on June 23, 1972, among himself, Helms, Ehrlichman, and Haldeman. That was when the Bay of Pigs flag was waved by the White House men in Helms's face in order to induce him to have Walters instruct Pat Gray of the FBI to go no further into certain Mexican monies, lest the FBI compromise CIA operations.

—

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

298

As we have suggested

earlier in the

book, Walters'

first

memcon,

davs after the June 2 3 meeting, seems to have been part of a deliberate attempt by the CIA to identify' the Nixon-requested written

five

blocking action as politically motivated. Whereas

Haldeman

recalled

had transmitted Nixon's instructions precisely, and had not mentioned a political basis for the blocking action (a position that the June 23 tape supports), the Walters memcon composed on June 28 strongly construed the White House instruction of June 23 as political, and omitted anv mention of the touchy Bay of Pigs project. that thev

On

the basis of the four

memcons, Walters prepared

a six-page

my

whole connection" with Watergate. The next day, he received a call summoning him to the White House on the following day, May 12. Walters, Haig, and Buzhardt had known one another for years. Haig and Walters were both Army generals. Haig had been instrumental, Roger Morris reports, in obtaining for Walters the job of translator for the secret Paris talks between Kissinger and the North Vietnamese Walters included French among the seven languages he spoke, and that was the language used with Le Due Tho. Evidently in preparation for his White House meeting, Walters took his affidavit to a suburban Virginia notary and had it notarized, and then went to see his old friends. He left them a copy of the affidavit, and asked them to call him if the White House felt that anything in it was covered by executive privilege or other restrictions, so that he could say so and withhold those parts when called to testify. About what happened next, there are three versions Walters' own, given in his memoir, Silent Missions; Nixon's, in RN; and that reported by Woodward and Bernstein in The Final Days. According to Walters, he heard nothing from the White House about the affidavit, so when he first testified on the Hill on May 14, in a closed-door session of the Armed Services Committee, he held little back. He evidently used the affidavit as the basis for what he said, because Acting Chairman Stuart Symington, Democrat of Missouri, affidavit,

"recounting

—

—

afterward asked Walters to provide the

remembered

memcons

themselves. Walters

committee had been "curious and interested, but not hostile." For his part, Symington had obviously heard some echo of the CIA's memos of the June 23 meeting behind those closed doors, for when he emerged he told newsmen "it was very clear that there was an attempt [on the part of the White House] to unload major responsibility for the Watergate bugging and coverup on the CIA." rhat was why Symington wanted the actual memcons to check the original documents rather than one man's recollections. After his testimony on May 14, Walters wrote, Haig and Buzhardt .

.

that the attitude of the

.

—

The Return of Alexander Haig

299

showed no concern, and when he went to see them, "they said that there were no parts of my affidavit on which they wished to claim privilege." Walters was quite adamant in his memoir that in this second meeting, as well as in the first one he had had at the White House, he had showed Haig and Buzhardt only the affidavit, not the memcons still

themselves.

Nixon remembered the

affair differently.

He

writes that Walters

memcons to the White House, and "the minute we saw them we knew we had a problem." It was the first Walters

definitely did bring the

memcon

(about June 23) that contained most of the problems. Nixon

had been clear to Haldeman that Richard Helms, whom Nixon disliked and distrusted, should not be allowed to think that the instruction to impede the FBI was political and here was a memcon that strongly implied that the CIA had involved itself in a crime (obstruction of justice) precisely in order to protect the president from political damage. And it was coming from a man whom Nixon considered "one of my old friends," Vernon Walters. Nixon wrote that he and Buzhardt tried to puzzle out what had happened. According to this version, Haig was not involved in that discussion, and a lateral glance at the headlines of iVIay 14 suggests why: That morning, Acting FBI Director Ruckelshaus announced the discovery of the 1969-1971 wiretap records in Ehrlichman's safe,

—

records that implicated Haig in the electronic eavesdropping of his

former colleagues. Haig was not named

in

Ruckelshaus' announcement,

but Haig must have been concerned by the discovery of the records

and perhaps his attention was diverted from the Walters matter. Moreover, Buzhardt was a lawyer, and Haig was not, so it was logical for Nixon to consult Buzhardt on this matter. The only explanation Buzhardt could offer to Nixon was that when Walters wrote of the June 23 conversation on June 28 his memory had been colored by three days of butting heads with John Dean, who had tried three mornings in a row to convince Walters that the CIA should pay bail for the burglars. "Buzhardt postulated," Nixon wrote, that Walters "had unconsciously reconstructed the conversation from the perspective of what he felt Dean was trying to do, rather than from what Haldeman and Ehrlichman had actually said." A few days later,

Haldeman came to visit Nixon, and the president took up the matter with him; Haldeman was quite certain that he hadn't given the CIA any grounds for thinking that the request had been political, and Nixon was "relieved by Haldeman's certainty." So Nixon decided that Walters had merely been confused, stopped worrying about that incoming missile, and turned his attention to others. Buzhardt made no further

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

300

attempt to get in touch with Walters, to straighten out Nixon's old friend on the misconstrued June 2 3 meeting or to prevent the memcons themselves from surfacing.

That was Nixon's version of events.

Woodward and

Bernstein, apparently reflecting interviews with

Buzhardt, wrote that Buzhardt did indeed see the 23 four- way meeting, and was "worried" because

memcon it

of the June

"tied the President

seemed intended to throw the FBI off the track." In Buzhardt's view, Walters was an unfortunate person to impugn the president, because he was not John Dean and "had neither an ax to grind nor an ass to save." Troubled, Buzhardt then went to see the president, expecting that Nixon would tell him either "that Walters was mistaken, or that Haldeman was so accustomed to doing things in the in this President's name that he had acted on his own authority." But Nixon unconcerned, defiant, and adamant Buzhardt found version that there had been nothing political behind the four- way June 23 meeting. When Buzhardt inquired if Walters should be allowed to turn the papers over to the Senate, Nixon was indifferent, and said, "Take them up and give them to the committee." The only version that exonerates Buzhardt (and Haig) from failing to warn Nixon that the Walters memcons could seriously undermine to an order that

—

—

Nixon's position of having acted within the law

is

that of

Woodward

and Bernstein, which reconstructed Buzhardt's private talk with Nixon and thus reflected interviews with Buzhardt, and, possibly, Haig. Equally important is what happened as a result of the president not being moved to try and stop Walters from turning over the damaging documents. First, the memcons did go to various Senate committees, and were quickly released by them to the newspapers, who had a field day. Headhnes charged that the president's men had used the CIA to block the FBI's investigation of Watergate for reasons that were overtly political.

I'he second consequence was the generating by the Haig-Buzhardt

by Nixon. Taken together with other John Dean's safe-deposit box copy of the Huston Plan, the revelation of the Dr. Fielding break-in and the Plumbers' activities, as well as the locating of the logs of the 1969-1971 wiretaps the release of the Walters memcons made five incoming missiles aimed at the White House, all of which had to do with "national security" matters. With these matters in the air, and the Watergate committee about to start public sessions within a few days, Buzhardt and Haig pressed Nixon to draft a blanket denial, one The Final Days suggested would have to be "a final definitive statement that

team of a

crucial public statement

matters then in the news

—

—

The Return of Alexander Haig

301

and implied." It was going would have to "stand for all time" and be "consistent with anything that might surface." (Emphasis in original.) According to the book, Nixon agreed to let Haig and Buzhardt "give it a try," and they recruited as cowriters Garment and the president's two chief speech writers, Raymond K. Price, Jr., and Patrick J. Budealt with the major allegations, both direct to be a statement that

chanan.

The statement would attempt to deal with all the incoming missiles, and with one that had not yet made its appearance on Nixon's radar screen but was already fully known to Haig and Buzhardt: the MoorerRadford affair. That may have been the crucial reason for a statement that could be a shield against ''anything that might surface." Haig and Buzhardt began a series of private strategy sessions with the president late in the afternoon of May 1 5 that lasted through that day and the next, well into the evening. The statement would be revelatory because it would admit responsibility for many of the matters then in the news, such as the Dr. Fielding break-in and the Plumbers' other activities, the Huston Plan, even the domestic wiretapping. Nixon would meet these missiles head on, and so defuse them. The statement would also make headlines because in it the president was going to reduce drastically his reliance on claims of executive privilege. It would say that executive privilege could not be claimed by any of the president's former aides in talking about matters directly connected with possible criminal conduct in the matters then under investigation, including Watergate, though the claim could still be legitimately raised in regard to matters of national security. That, of

would protect

course,

several other matters as well as

Moorer- Radford,

but since the president was going out of his way to leave unprotected activities and the Dr. Fielding break-in, which he had theretofore refused to discuss under a claim of national security, the new, reduced-size claim of executive privilege would have the effect of protecting only Moorer- Radford. We will see how precise the protection actually became in the next few chapters. The section of the statement on which Nixon fixated most intensely dealt with the June 23, 1972, meeting and the instruction to the CIA

such things as the Plumbers'

to block the

memcon

FBI. Early drafts of this section followed the Walters

was involved. Nixon adamantly insisted that had been national security, and the statement eventually reflected that view but in a way that intermingled his stopping of the FBI operations with a defense of the Plumbers: "I wanted justice done with regard to Watergate, but in the scale of national priorities with line that politics

the reason

—

which

I

had

to deal

—and not

at the

time having any idea of the extent

— EXIT THE PRESIDENT

302

of political abuse which Watergate reflected

—

I also had to be deeply concerned with ensuring that neither the covert operations of the CIA nor the operations of the Special Investigations Unit [the Plumbers] should be compromised. It was certainly not my intent, nor my wish, that the investigation of Watergate be impeded in any way." That wasn't what Nixon had told Haldeman on June 2 3 nor what Haldeman and Ehrlichman had told Walters and Helms. It was a statement that tried to put the one remaining undisclosed Plumber ,

activity

—Moorer- Radford—under the national security

shield.

Around 1 1:00 p.m. on May 16, according to All the President's Men, Woodward had another meeting with Deep Throat, an ultradramatic one in the underground garage. When Woodward arrived, his source "was pacing around nervously. His lower jaw seemed to quiver. Deep Throat began

talking, almost in a

monologue.

He had

only a few

Woodward transformation had come over his

minutes, he raced through a series of statements.

listened

friend." was clear a Deep Throat would answer no questions about his statements or anything else, but did add that Woodward should "be cautious."

obediently.

It

In this rendering.

Woodward

called

Bernstein,

who

arrived

at

Woodward's apartment to find his reportorial twin refusing to talk and masking the silence with classical music while he tapped out on his typewriter a warning that electronic surveillance was going on and that they had "better watch it." Who was doing the monitoring? "Woodward mouthed C-I-A." Both men then feared for their lives, and went around for some days looking for spooks behind every tree. Later in the book. Woodward and Bernstein describe the doings of that night as "rather foolish and melodramatic." Actually, the dramatic elements of the scene draw the reader away from the material that Deep Throat presented to Woodward that night, which concerned the precise matters that Nixon had been discussing with Haig and Buzhardt those incoming missiles, and Dean's allegations of a cover-up. Some of the leads that Deep Throat gave to Woodward that night were outlandishly wrong, such as the claim that some of the people involved in Watergate had been in it to make money, that Dean had regular talks with Senator Baker, and that the covert national and international schemes had been supervised by Mitchell. Ihe matters about which Deep Throat spoke that were later proved correct discussions of executive clemency. Hunt's demands for money. Dean's activities with both the White House and the CRP officials. Dean's talk with Liddy were the ones Nixon had earlier that evening discussed with Buzhardt and Haig.

—

The Return of Alexander Haig

On May

303

Nixon issued a major statement of four which he released information about the 1969-1971 wiretaps, the activities of the Plumbers, and the Huston Plan, and justified them all as necessary reactions to the rampant leaks, campus unrest, antiwar violence, and other threats to the nation's security. In the major passage quoted above, he also assured the nation that he had not tried to impede the FBI or to obstruct justice when he had directed Haldeman and Ehrlichman to sit down with Helms and Walters on June 23, 1972. 22, 1973, President

thousand words

in

This statement provided

a

very public, seemingly very definitive

explanation of events, and was meant to establish a benchmark against which all future allegations, documents, and as-yet-hidden evidence

could be measured. Pressed on the president by Haig and Buzhardt as their first real action in "protecting" the president, it had precisely the opposite effect.

It

put the president very far out on a limb, and

challenged the world to try and saw off that limb.

19

STEWART SHAKES UP

THE WHITE HOUSE

ON

May

14,

1973, the Pentagon's top civilian investigator,

Don

Stewart, reached out for help in finding a new assignment in the government. Six months earlier Stewart had been elevated to the post of inspector general of the Defense Investigative Service, but now he wanted to get out of the Department of Defense. Recent events had disturbed Stewart, the man who, while investi-

gating the military spying at the White House, had pulled the

confession from

Chuck Radford and had

initial

stayed on top of that case as

best he could. In his career as an investigator in the Pentagon, he had

frequently been at odds with Defense Department general counsel

Fred Buzhardt, for example over such cases as the leak of the Pentagon

Papers and the flap over Jack Anderson's columns. Buzhardt, a former military officer turned lawyer, viewed each investigation as a political

problem to be managed; Stewart, a former FBI agent, approached each one as a case to be solved, with wrongdoers to be punished and national security secrets protected at all costs. "When I was in the Pentagon," Stewart told us, Buzhardt "was the only guy who actually tried to thwart me from doing my job. He was the one who tried to obstruct

304

Stewart Shakes Up the White House

my

investigations."

On

one report prepared about leaks of

305

classified

information to Congress, Stewart said that Buzhardt had told alter the findings so as to

Stewart did so on

all

remove the most

him

to

politically sensitive items;

copies of the report except the one sent to the

Defense Intelligence Agency. In other cases that Stewart had investiwho had leaked classified materials to the press had not been punished, and neither were the reporters, who, Stewart argued, should have been prosecuted for printing what they

gated, government officials

knew to be classified information. Most important, Stewart and Buzhardt had clashed over MoorerRadford. Buzhardt had ordered Stewart to turn over to him all the files and reports on the case, ostensibly so Buzhardt could prepare his report for Laird, and it was Buzhardt who had summoned Stewart back from vacation in Florida in January 1972 to sit in on the Welander reinterview.

Seeking

a route

out of Defense and into a

new assignment, Stewart

White House and asked for David Young. Young was gone, and his call was shunted to an aide to Len Garment named Richard Tufaro, whom Stewart had never met. In his conversation with Tufaro, Stewart was bitter about several matters. He expressed anger at the way the Pentagon handled national security investigations involving DoD personnel, but he was also annoyed about the overtly political handling that the White House was giving his old agency, the FBI. Former police chief of Kansas City Clarence Kelley had recently been named acting director of the FBI, and Stewart thought that was wrong and that the bureau needed a seasoned investigator as its chief. Stewart told Tufaro that several congressional committees had approached him about work, but because of his contempt for the way Congress leaked he didn't want to go to Capitol Hill. However, he said, he might have to go to the Hill if he couldn't find another job in the executive branch. He was forty-eight, and two more years of government service would allow him to retire at age fifty with a good pension. In the remainder of the conversation, Stewart told Tufaro some

called the

he was

told,

details

about several investigations he'd conducted that hadn't resulted

punishment

for leakers. In 1970, then-Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson had authorized access for Daniel Ellsberg, then a Rand employee, to classified records about an opponent of the South Vietnamese government, information that Ellsberg had leaked to the press. in

L.

few weeks, Richardson had become the new attorney had been dismissed, and one of the chief leak-recipients in the press, William Beecher of The New York Times, had been selected as assistant secretary of defense for public In the past

general, the charges against Ellsberg

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

306 Beyond

Buzhardt's elevation to the White House as a burned Stewart, because on the Ellsberg investigation Buzhardt had been entirely uncooperative in supporting the FBI and the Justice Department's case; in fact, Stewart claimed, he had had to go around Buzhardt in order to get information on the case to affairs.

that,

special counsel really

Justice.

Stewart was truly irked that none of the people involved in the Moorer- Radford affair had been punished. Moorer had been reappointed for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Welander and Robinson had been awarded new commands, and even Chuck Radford was still at work for the Navy. Stewart

made

insistent requests. Tufaro heard threats.

He hung up

on Stewart and immediately started to sound the alarm in the White House. He got out a memo to Len Garment, who had replaced John

Dean as counsel to the president. "Stewart clearly is in a position to damage the Administration because of his direct involvement in White House investigations of national security leaks," Tufaro said in his May 14 memo. Tufaro did not understand all of what Stewart had said to him, especially about the Yeoman Radford matter Tufaro had not known of it, and Stewart's references had been veiled but Tufaro used

— —

the reference as a buttressing for his

own concern

recent elevation of Buzhardt. In closing his

memo

to

in relation to the

Garment, Tufaro

wrote that Stewart's "appearance [on the scene] does underline mv warning to Doug Parker [another White House aide] on Friday about the risk of putting Buzhardt in such a sensitive position."

The

first

indication Stewart got about

response would be was the seizure of over and ordered flipped out

them

when they

all

his

what the White House's files. "Buzhardt came .

.

.

seized," Stewart told us, "and they almost

discovered the top-secret stuff

1

had." Then,

Stewart reports, his secretary was approached and asked to keep tabs

on him and report

his

movements. She declined

these forays, Stewart found that he had very

little

to cooperate. After

work

to do.

June 1973, not long after these events. Admiral Robert Welander received a phone call from his former subordinate Bob Woodward. Welander had recently returned to the Pentagon after a year at sea, following the discovery of Chuck Radford's activities and the closing of the military liaison office. Woodward wanted to see him immediately, and he agreed. "We met at a Marriott hotel in Virginia, across the river from D.C.," Welander remembers. "Woodward started right out by saying that the Radford story was 'bubbling around,' and that it was going to In

Stewart Shakes Up the White House

break sooner or later." der says,

but

I

told

Woodward

clearly

knew about

307

the story. Welan-

"He just kept pressing me for information on what I knew, him I wouldn't give him anything," and the meeting ended

on an inconclusive note. Welander then returned to the Pentagon and informed both Chairman Moorer and Admiral Zumwalt of his meeting with Woodward. According to All the President's Men, Woodward had had a meeting in a garage on May 16 with Deep Throat, two days after Stewart's call to Tiifaro. And, as we know, immediately after Haig and Buzhardt took up positions at the White House, they were clearly concerned about the possible revival of Moorer- Radford. Was Woodward sent to see Welander?

Was he

trying to dig

up information on Moorer-Radford, it would not be

or was he really seeking to confirm that information on

by Welander, not even to a reporter who had once been his subordinate? Such an assurance would have eased Haig's mind. After this meeting. Woodward did not write anything about Moorer-Radford for many months, and evidently made no other attempts to pursue the revealed

story.

from Tufaro, and in late June, to another White House aide, W. J. "Bill" Baroody, with whom he shared a mutual friend. In his letter, Stewart sought "guidance and assistance" on how to get out of the Defense Department; he stressed that he needed only two more years of employment toward a good retirement, and said that he might have to take one of the Capitol Hill positions. If he did so, he told Baroody, it was certainly possible that details of some of his investigations might come out during the job interviews, and he wanted to assure Baroody that he would not disclose details of any case that had a national security interest. However, Stewart wrote, he had no such compunction about the cases involving Daniel Ellsberg or Jack AnderStewart continued to wait for a

when

he'd gotten no

son because "I don't

call

word back, wrote

feel Fred's [Buzhardt's] interest in the

Ellsberg or

Anderson case was for security interest but rather totally for political considerations. ... I knew professionally he [Buzhardt] was running the [Ellsberg] case for politics and not security." He also added that the "Anderson case," by which he meant the investigation of Radford, "speaks for itself. All the culprits are still on board. ... As you can see, the foregoing is enough to upset an honest investigator and I just want to get the hell out of DoD." Stewart softened his stance somewhat by pointing out he had become a target. "You may or may not realize that I was put here to be buried which

is

quite humiliating and to add insult to injury I'm sure

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

308

Fred had the

How

stupid.

files that were in my custody seized about a month There wasn't anything in those files I needed."

ago.

In his letter to Baroody, Stewart again cited Clarence Kelley's

appointment

made

as

FBI

director.

The phone

call to

Tufaro had merely

reference to Kelley, for Stewart had learned that his

own name

had been on a list for consideration as director of the FBI. He had not (as Haig and Buzhardt would later charge) demanded the directorStewart knew enough about Washington politics not to do that. ship His aims were a rung lower. His first choice, Stewart wrote Baroody, was to be appointed as Clarence Kelley's deputy, but if he got no help from the White House, he would go for employment to Republican senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott, or, as a last resort, to Democratic conservative Senator Henry Jackson. Stewart feared that the Democrats would try to "enlist me for political reasons and damn it, that's what I don't want and is why the hell I want to get out of for politics." Stewart ended his letter to Baroody by reemphasizing the role he had played in forcing Radford to confess to spying

—

DOD—

for the military.

Buzhardt and Garment believed Stewart's letter to be an attempt at They decided to go after Stewart directly. According to Garment, he was influenced by Chief of Staff Haig's desire to keep Moorer- Radford under wraps. On June 28, 1973, Buzhardt phoned Attorney General Elliot Richardson who himself had a reason for keeping Stewart under wraps about prosecuting Stewart. Next day, Garment sent Richardson an eyes only letter, together with the Tufaro memo and Stewart's letter to Baroody; Garment wrote that "Stewart is using the threat of disclosure ... in an effort to induce a high-level appointment for himself." Garment's letter concluded by urging Richardson to investigate the matter and determine if Stewart should be blackmail.

—

—

prosecuted for criminal conduct. Years later,

when

interviewed by us.

Garment remained

uncomfortable discussing the Stewart matter.

documents

in the case, including his

He

own eyes only

son, but did take full responsibility for sending

clearly

refused to review the

it.

letter to

In our

Richard-

first inter-

view, he insisted, "I took his [Stewart's] letter as a threat," and that

do with the suggestion that any such thing to me," he asserted in our interview, and added, "Boy Scout's honor!" In a second interview, two years later, he admitted the probable involvement of Haig and Buzhardt, recalling that Buzhardt might well have said to him words to the effect that "This guy [Stewart] is a troublemaker and we should do something." In the next sentence of the interview. neither Buzhardt nor Haig had anything to

Stewart be prosecuted.

"Nobody

said

}

Stewart Shakes Up the White House Garment got

to the heart of the matter: "Fred

309

beheved that

calamitous for the country to have this [Moorer-Radford]

it

would be

come

out.

Haig also felt this way [and] I accepted that the disclosure of Moorer-Radford would be hurtful." The fear, Garment reported, was that Congress might use the information in a vendetta against the JCS that would result in undue interference in military affairs that were better left to the president and his advisers. At the time, Garment's memo regarding Stewart was routed by Richardson down to Henry Petersen, head of the criminal division, who took a close look at it. Petersen wrote back to the attorney general on July 10 and stated in unequivocal terms, "We do not believe that the materials furnished you by Mr. Garment warrant a criminal investigation of Stewart," and added that it "is not at all clear" that Stewart had .

made

.

.

a "threat" to disclose classified information.

Neither the federal

espionage statutes dealing with disclosure of classified material nor any other federal criminal law statutes applied to the particulars furnished

by Garment, Petersen explained;

in other

words, there was no case to

be made against Stewart.

Richardson received

it

all

but rejected the Petersen

memo, and on

the day he

scribbled a note to an aide asking whether Stewart could

possibly be charged with extortion or blackmail. Richardson's note

ended up with a midlevel official in Petersen's criminal division, Carl W. Belcher, chief of the general crimes section. Stewart had heard nothing from Baroody, and didn't know that this process was going on at Justice. But he still wanted another job, and wrote another letter to senior Defense Department aide Martin Hoffman, on July 16. In this one, he held nothing back in his condemnation of how Moorer-Radford had been buried. After telling Hoffman of his desire to find a job outside Defense, Stewart wrote of his role in breaking the case of "a rear admiral and a Navy enlisted man engaged in a plot of spying on the President of the U.S. with the purpose of furnishing the results to Adm. Moorer." The whole matter, he wrote, had been hushed up "to spare OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense], the military and the President political embarrassment." Stewart said that the story could not remain a secret forever and recommended that Secretary of Defense Schlesinger obtain a briefing "before he finds himself in an embarrassing position."

Back

move was

at Justice, Belcher's first

to have Justice's

own

files

checked, and he learned that Richardson had indeed been a party to the 1970 Ellsberg leak in the

ways

then passed this information and Alfred L.

in

all

which Stewart had outlined. He the materials to his

Hantman, and had him look

own

deputy,

into the entire matter.

On

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

310

August

2,

Hantman wrote back

to Belcher that the effort to

go

after

Stewart was "fooHshness," that the Tufaro-Stewart session had been "low-key," and that Tiifaro had gone overboard in placing a "sinister

on Stewart's request. What Stewart had written to Baroody, Hantman said, was nothing more than a request for assistance to an old soldier from the ranks, and its nature was underscored bv Stewart's telling Baroody that he didn't want to go to work for Senator Jackson cast"

because he feared

Hantman

political exploitation. "It certainly strains credulity,"

wrote, "to believe that

if a

former FBI agent, such

as Stewart,

intended to 'commit or attempt an act of extortion,' he would reduce

My own such intention to physical proof in the form of a writing. view is that the present Administration may be buying more trouble than the matter is worth if they seriously desire some concocted theory of prosecution be developed on these facts." If the government tried to prosecute any government employee who asked a friend for help in getting a job because he does not like "what is going on," Hantman .

.

added, the result would be chaos; "to merely articulate such

.

a proposi-

foolishness." This remarkably forthright

and was sent upstairs by Belcher to Petersen, who sent it on to Richardson, writing him that no federal charges likely could be pressed, and suggesting that the Stewart matter be referred to the Department of Defense for possible administrative tion

is

to realize

its

insightful analysis of the situation

action.

now

had enough ammunition to say no to pressure from the White House but he didn't do so. He gave the matter to his personal special assistant, John T Smith. On September 6, 1973, in an eyes only memo, Smith apologized for a delay on the matter, writing that it had gotten "lost in the shuffle, which is probably where it belongs." Smith echoed Petersen and Hantman in suggesting that criminal prosecution was unwarranted and would engender precisely what everyone hoped to avoid, by making the matter public. With this, and only after several attempts to pursue prosecution of Stewart, did the effort to go after Stewart come to an end. In the meantime, Haig was trying to recruit Solicitor General Robert H. Bork for the job of counsel to Richard Nixon on Watergate matters. Bork had joined the Justice Department only weeks earlier, after years of private practice. Bork later told us that Haig made an Richardson

certainly

—

emotional appeal to Bork's patriotism president's defense,

which was

in

asking

him

to handle the

in disarray.

"Haig was pointing out that all kinds of crazy things were going on and he wanted to get things back under control. ... He was just lamenting what was happening at the White House," Bork told us.

Stewart Shakes Up the White House Haig mentioned gate, the

specifically three

tough

311

The first was WaterAgnew was "in trouble,"

issues.

second was that Vice President Spiro

do with what Haig referred to, Bork says, as in other words, the the "military penetration" of the White House and the third issue had

Moorer- Radford

to

—

affair.

Bork, of course, had no idea what Haig was talking about on the

Haig portrayed it to him as a horrible episode. seemed shocked by it and said, 'My God, this happened!' He

third issue, although

"He

just

was deploring it," recalls Bork. Apparently Haig had calculated that if Bork did come to the White House, he would eventually trip over Moorer-Radford, and Haig wanted to launch a preemptive strike that would position him as being outraged over the military penetration. But Bork declined to come to the White House, and stayed on at Justice. Despite the attempts at pursuing Stewart and misleading Bork, Moorer-Radford wouldn't stay buried. Jack Anderson got back into the act in a big way, through an article in Parade magazine of July 22, 1973, entitled "My Journal on Watergate." The article was published when the nation's attention was firmly fixed on the televised Senate hearings about Watergate, with their revelations about a White House taping system, the "White House horrors," the Plumbers, and everything else. In the article, Anderson boasted that the Nixon administration had for years been trying to discover his sources, but couldn't do so, and that arms of the government had flailed out in all directions when he broke news stories the administration hadn't liked. For instance, he wrote that "Inside the Pentagon, suspected sources were grilled behind the forbidding doors of Room 3E993." His piece on the tilt to Pakistan, Anderson noted, had been investigated by the notorious White House Plumbers, who "concluded mistakenly that the source was located on Henry Kissinger's staff. Innocent staffers were yanked from behind their desks and dragged to polygraph machines, although it was the White House, not my sources, doing the lying about Pakistan. Eventually, an entire section of Kissinger's staff was scattered around the world, and Admiral Robert Welander who headed it was exiled to the Atlantic fleet." If Anderson had wanted to start a fire, he could not have chosen better fuel than to mention such particulars as the room in which Radford had been interrogated by Stewart, and the name of Welander. First to pick up the burning kindling was Donald G. Sanders, deputy minority counsel of the Senate Watergate committee. Sanders and Don Stewart had worked together in the FBI, and stayed in touch afterward, so Sanders recognized the room mentioned by Anderson as

I

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

312

the one in which Stewart conducted investigations. Sanders conveyed

knowledge to two other men on the minority staff, Howard Liebengood and Fred Thompson, both of whom reported to Senator Howard Baker, vice chairman of the panel. On July 24, Sanders called the Pentagon, and within hours, Stewart showed up to talk to Sanders and Liebengood. He was very much inclined to do so because Anderson's article had angered him, too: Here was the leak recipient, flaunting his triumph in the face of the authorities. Stewart readily told them that the India-Pakistan leak was much bigger than what Anderson had described, and said it involved an episode whose implications were grave. He outlined to them the dimensions of Moorer- Radford. (Again, we must emphasize that Stewart knew nothing about the Ehrlichman-Young-Welander interview, and had participated only in the Buzhardt-Welander reinterview, during which the significant references to Al Haig were omitted.) Sanders and Liebengood immediately wrote a memo on the interview for Thompson, who showed it to Baker. Upon being apprised of the military espionage, Howard Baker sensed that it could be an important piece of the Watergate puzzle. The whole affair bothered Baker. He was somewhat aware that the White House regarded him as being in their pocket, and as the ranking Republican on the Democratic-controlled committee he did feel a deep responsibility to the Republican president but he was saddened by the revelations of White House wrongdoing and could not understand them. John Ehrlichman was one of the next scheduled witnesses, and the vice chairman of the Senate committee determined to put some questions about Moorer- Radford to Ehrlichman when he testified under oath. John Ehrlichman arrived for his inquisition on July 26 accompanied by lawyer John Wilson, who was also currently representing Bob this

—

Haldeman before Baker had

the committee.

in front

of

him the August

11, 1971,

man from Bud Krogh and David Young

memo

to Ehrlich

that outlined the pending

among other things, Why, Baker wanted to

Ellsberg-Pentagon Papers probe and suggested,

an operation to obtain Ellsberg's medical

facts.

know, was one and only one paragraph deleted from his copy of the memo? He asked Ehrlichman, "Does it have to do with the national security matters that the President refers to repeatedly in his statement

of

May

22 as being interwoven?" Ehrlichman agreed that

it

did, and

was "one of the items exempted from the executive privilege exceptions, so to speak," and that he would "probably be violating two that

it

or three statutes

A

bit later

if

I

disclosed

[it]

at this point."

Ehrlichman allowed that

if it

came out

in public, "that

f

Stewart Shakes Up the White House

313

would be interesting and titillating and whatnot, but it would cause more mischief than the good [that] would be produced from the disclosure."

Baker believed he knew full well what Ehrlichman was referring to, because two days earlier Don Stewart had briefed his staff about Moorer-Radford. In fact, as someone who has read the unexpurgated original told us, that fifth paragraph related to a report from British intelligence service its

way

to the

MI-5

that a

copy of the Pentagon Papers had found

USSR.

Baker proceeded carefully. What had the president meant. Baker asked Ehrlichman, when he told the nation on May 22, 1973, that the Plumbers had been involved in "important national security operations which themselves had no connection to Watergate?" Ehrlichman could see that he

was entering dangerous

territory,

but he

reference to Moorer-Radford, allowing that in the

made

a veiled

Nixon statement the

president had been referring less to the Pentagon Papers and Ellsberg

than to "other problems" handled by the Special Investigations Unit.

"What?" Baker asked, almost pleading. Ehrlichman said that "that is as far as I can go," and when Baker pressed on he ran up against a stone wall in the form of a White House letter that Ehrlichman's counsel John Wilson insisted on reading to Baker and inserting into the public record. Three days earlier, in the wake of the Anderson article's publication, Wilson had received the letter from Fred Buzhardt. It expressly forbade either of Wilson's clients from discussing one particular matter during their appearances on the Hill: Moorer-Radford. Of course the military espionage was not so named in the letter, but the reference was unmistakable. Buzhardt opened by saying that the letter was in answer to Wilson's request to clarify the extent of executive privilege. The recently appointed counsel to the president pointed out that the president's May 22 statement had waived the executive privilege claim in regard to matters pertaining to Watergate, but "The 1971 investigation about which you inquired" was not related to Watergate, and "does involve most sensitive national security matters,

the public

which would cause damage to the national security." Baker asked Wilson if the claim of executive privilege "adverts only to the 1971 investigation." Wilson said that it did, and "I have no idea what that is." Howard Baker was circumspect, but pursued the matter. Did that 1971 investigation have to do with what Baker referred to in veiled terms as "anything related to, say, the Indo-Pakistan War?" Ehrlichman had to phrase his answer very carefully: "Well, you see.

disclosure of

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

314

whether the

I

answer yes or no, Senator,

pubHc domain, and

I

think

I

response to your question because

am

coming

into

precluded from making a

fair

I

have added to

we could

sit

it

here and by 'Twenty

—

number of alternatives so that it would be it would become more readily apparent. ..." Ehrlichman said he'd be willing to answer "any proper question," but "certain subjects of this kind of a sensitive national security nature are simply not mine to Questions' eliminate a

give." it was this one subject, Moorer-Radford. Wilson expressly forbade discussion of this matter, and of no others. Eighteen months after the espionage had speaking, ostensibly, for Nixon and presumably ceased, Buzhardt with the permission of his direct boss and close friend Al Haig would let John Ehrlichman talk about the Plumbers, about the Dr. Fielding break-in, about the wiretap logs recently discovered in his safe, but not about what Haig had described to Bork as the "military penetration." Only under one circumstance, Ehrlichman told Baker, would he talk: If Baker could find "someone in the executive branch to sit down on a confidential basis and talk through this one particular matter, or if they will tell you that I can do it, I would be happy to do it on that basis." Wilson added that he had no knowledge of the matter but would go to Buzhardt and try to set up a private briefing for Baker and other senators, if they so desired, and if they could promise in front of the television public that there would be no leaks. They promised. The following day, July 27, Buzhardt and Garment met secretly with Ervin, Baker, and their top aides, Sam Dash and Fred Thompson. There was no discussion of the omitted paragraph five, and no interest in it on either side of the table. The subject was Moorer-Radford. In this meeting Garment and Buzhardt said very little about it except to strongly importune Ervin not to pursue it because it was too explosive. Someone must have mentioned Don Stewart in relation to Moorer-Radford, because press reports indicate that Garment and Buzhardt also attacked Don Stewart in this meeting, raising what they said was his alleged attempt at blackmail. The senators apparently did not know that Henry Petersen at Justice had looked into that alleged attempt and had already advised that it was not criminal, and Buzhardt and Garment didn't tell them. Ervin ruled that the matter was not relevant to the Watergate investigation and promised that the committee would not go into it. Baker, who disagreed, continued to pursue it. In his meeting with Liebengood and Sanders, Stewart had urged that someone speak with David Young, who, Stewart knew, had

It

wasn't "certain subjects,"

The Buzhardt

letter to

—

—

Stewart Shakes Up the White House

315

prepared a lengthy report on Moorer- Radford. Young met with Baker and some aides after Baker had had his meeting with Ervin, Buzhardt,

and Garment, but Young only agreed to talk off the record. Baker laid out for Young what he knew, which was incomplete. According to one participant in the meeting, during Baker's monologue, "Young threw his head back, closed his eyes and remained that way." Once Baker was finished. Young said distinctly, "That is the one thing that the president told me not to discuss at all, and I won't." He urged Baker to go to the president directly. Our source, a former Baker aide, noted that Young did talk about the Dr. Fielding break-in, which had already become public, and gave what he knew about the "White House horrors," but "he wouldn't discuss Moorer-Radford." Baker did not then see Nixon but he did go directly to Haig and asked him for an explanation. The former Baker aide remembered the outcome: "Haig wouldn't give up the Pentagon report on MoorerRadford."

20

FIVE DAYS IN

BACK

PY

few months of 1973, when the Senate Watergate committee was getting started, Chief Counsel Sam Dash invited to lunch one of the reporters who had done the most to break the multiple stories of Watergate. "I was starting from scratch and I really thought Woodward had a lot of information," Dash told us. "I couldn't promise him any leaks or anything, but since I thought he wanted to get this thing exposed as much as I did, could he at least point me in the right direction?" Woodward "really didn't have any facts other than telling us to talk to certain secretaries and other little people around the White House." Later, Dash offered Woodward a job working for the committee; Woodward declined, but suggested a "great investigator and a guy with integrity," Scott Armstrong. Dash interviewed Armstrong, was in the first

impressed, and sought to hire him.

Armstrong was a childhood friend of Woodward's from Wheaton, and his hiring was somewhat controversial, as members of the

Illinois,

tantamount to placing a direct line was considerable discussion about the wisdom of having him [Armstrong] on the committee in the first place, because of the relationship," Republican staffer Republican minority considered

from the committee

it

to the Washington Post. "1 here

316

^

Five Days in July

317

Michael Madigan told us. Senior minority counsel Fred Thompson later wrote in his own Watergate memoir, At That Point In Time, that while he agreed with Sam Dash that Armstrong had been 'Very capable," and had done good work, he believed that Armstrong should never have been on the staff because of the close relationship with Woodward. "More than once," Thompson wrote, "I accused Armstrong of being Woodward's source." More important for our story, Armstrong seems to have been a conduit to the committee for information Woodward wanted the senators to know, information that sometimes came directly from Deep Throat. "I was designated as Woodward's point of contact on the committee," Armstrong told us.

"By May

17,

when

1973,

the Senate hearings opened, Bernstein

and Woodward had gotten lazy," they reported in All Men. Their nighttime to

rely

on

a

investigators

on both

visits

the President's

were scarcer, and, increasingly, they had begun

relatively

easy access to the Senate committee's staff

and attorneys. There was, however, one unchecked entry

lists,

presidential aide Alexander

P.

Butterfield.

Throat and Hugh Sloan had mentioned him, and Sloan had in passing, that

Both Deep said,

almost

he was in charge of "internal security." In January,

Woodward had gone by Butterfield's house in a Virginia suburb. No one had come to the door. In May, Woodward asked a committee staff member if Butterfield had been interviewed. "No, we're too busy."

—

Woodward twice pushed

Butterfield on the committee and his he did so requires some examination. He wrote that Deep Throat mentioned Butterfield's name first in a conversation in October 1972. When Woodward asked Hugh Sloan in December of 1972 if he knew the name, Sloan responded "almost in passing" that

explanation of

why

Butterfield "supervised internal security

Woodward wrote

that he

knew

and the paper flow" to Nixon.

that at Justice, the internal security

which had been under the direction of Robert Mardian before he went to work for the Nixon campaign, was in charge of government wiretapping, and therefore suspected that the same terminology in the White House might have to do with monitoring private conversations. Woodward underlined the Sloan reference in his notes and in March mentioned it to the Watergate committee investigators. But the "internal security" label is oddly attributed to Sloan, who had been a scheduling assistant at the White House. Hugh Sloan knew

division,

of Butterfield but could not have regarded Butterfield as an "internal security"

man

because Butterfield's position was overseer of White

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

318

House administration and Sloan was not

in a position to

know about

Butterfield's covert duties involving President Nixon's taping system.

However, Alexander Haig was, because he was a long-term friend of Butterfield's and also knew quite a bit about "internal security" wiretapping. It is more likely that Deep Throat, not Sloan, urged Butterfield on Woodward. In March, Butterfield had left the White House to become administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. It was a reward for four years of arduous service to the president. It was in May that Woodward first mentioned Butterfield to the committee investigators. Several weeks after the first contact, Woodward again raised Butterfield's name with a committee staff member, this time stressing Butterfield's "internal security" duties at the White House. For the moment, though, the committee had more important work to do, on the John Dean testimony that held the nation's attention for several weeks.

We

many sections from Dean's testimony what was true and what was false about it, so we

have earlier drawn

onstrate

recapitulate here those five days of

Dean

to

dem-

will not

that gripped the television

audience near the end of June 1973. However, some comments on the testimony are needed.

Dean's testimony was extremelv detailed because

it

had to be;

picture had to be complete to be thoroughly convincing.

was

in perfect position to

draw

that picture because he had

his

And Dean known

all

of what had gone on during the planning for the break-in and the cover-up; he alone had

Dean had

all

the information.

donned glasses, and wore only conservative Behind him sat Maureen, often the subject of photographers and of the television cameras as she sat, in conservative

attire

cut his hair,

when he

testified.

clothing, poised, good-looking, blond, her hair piled atop her head.

As

her husband of eight months poured out his story she appeared to pay attention but not to betray any emotion.

—

In his testimony Dean implicated Mitchell reluctantly, it seemed and more readily aimed allegations at Ehrlichman, Haldeman, and at the president. He went easy on Magruder and Strachan, only bringing them in when he had to, and all the while being careful lest he anger them unduly and provoke them to the sorts of detailed recollections of what had happened that would have revealed to the Senate committee Dean's own complicity and role as central instigator, and given his interlocutors reason to doubt his story. The committee bought Dean, lock, stock, and barrel, precisely because he was an arrow that pointed upward, in the direction they chose to look, some members reluctantly, some eagerly, but all firmly

—

Five Days in July

319

"What did Howard Baker

casting their eyes toward a single destination: the president.

the President know, and

when

did he

know

it?"

Senator

asked. Baker did not inquire as to the president's sources of information, or if those sources lied to illegal

Nixon or

tricked

cover-up actions. Later on, in their

him

own

into undertaking

testii^^y,

all

that

Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell seemed to be able to offer to the committee were denials that rang hollow because they were not as' densely detailed as Dean's accusations. They did have documents, but Mitchell's logs were ignored, and the notes of Haldeman and Ehrlichman seemed self-serving. Moreover, the committee apparently ignored Strachan's offer of documents that showed that Dean handled political intelligence at the White House. There were many holes in Dean's story, and logical inconsistencies. Few of these holes and inconsistencies were closely scrutinized, because it seemed inconceivable to the senators and their staff that the arrow should possibly be pointing at Dean and not away from. him. In effect. Dean had a free ride. But toward the end of June 1973, Leonard Garment prepared a memo about Dean, which bore the in-house name of the "Golden Bov" memo, as the Nixon camp's response to Dean's devastating accusations. The Golden Boy memo was transmitted to the Senate by Fred Buzhardt. The memo noted many of the instances wherein Dean's story was contradicted by sworn testimony, documents, and logic, and pointed the arrow at Dean, As we look at that memo in retrospect, we see that its main contentions were correct, but that the memo was flawed by the assertion that Mitchell as well as Dean was culpable. Senator Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, announced his intention on June 27 to ask Dean questions based on this memo, as "a substitute for cross-examination of Mr. Dean by the President of the United States." That afternoon and on into the next morning of testimony, he read Dean portions of the memo and asked him to comment on the accusations. At every turn. Dean denied the charges, raising an obfuscatory fog of changed dates, switched attributions and outright lies that themselves went unchallenged. For instance, when Inouye read something about the GEMSTONE meetings and Dean's presence at them. First of all, after office,

of

my

part in

Dean I

replied.

returned from the second meeting in Mr. Mitchell's

and reported to Mr. Haldeman what had occurred and told him feelings about it

any part

in

it,

that I wanted to have no White House should have have no part in it and have no

what was occurring, and

and told him

I

thought no one

he agreed and told

me

to

in the

I

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

320

knowledge that there was going to be

a

meeting

in

Key Biscayne and did

not learn about that meeting until long after June 17, 1972.

This denial was full of holes. As we have pointed out earlier, Dean's supposed "no-part-in-it" conversation with Haldeman had never taken place. Furthermore, as Jeb Magruder had tried to tell the prosecutors, if not the Senate, Dean had certainly had knowledge of after it had been funded and well before June 17, 1972. Inouye, however, did not explore the denial, and merely moved on to other charges made by the memo, for instance, that Dean had known of the

GEMSTONE

Dean had which "the cover-up plan was hatched."

break-in since the seventeenth, and, according to Magruder,

had meetings on June

19, at

To these charges, Dean responded: I

believe that the policy regarding the cover-up

was

set long before

I

when

I

returned from the Far East over the weekend of the break-in and

came into the office and talked to Mr. Strachan I realized that the White House already decided initially that it was going to start destroying incriminating documents and certainly was not going to step forward as to what its knowledge of the matter was at that point in time.

As we have demonstrated, Dean actually began the cover-up from Manila in telephone instructions to Magruder before Dean returned to Washington. But the senators did not know they could have proved that in 1973, when Inouye read to Dean the nearly correct attacks of the Golden Boy memo.

One for

it

important passage from the

memo

deserved a wider audience,

struck to the heart of the matter.

Dean's activity in the coverup also made him, perhaps unwittingly, the principal author of the political and constitutional crisis that Watergate

now

would have been embarrassing for the President if become known shortly after June 17th, but it is the kind of embarrassment that an immensely popular President could easily have weathered. Ihc political problem has been magnified one thousandfold because the truth is coming to light so belatedly. epitomizes.

It

the true facts had

.

The comment was

White House. Nixon's willingness the

full facts

.

dismissed at the time as self-serving for the

tioned, but a distinct possibility If

.

to enter into the cover-up

is

correctly raised

is

unques-

by the paragraph:

and culpability had become known to the president

at

an early stage, he might well have been able to "weather" the "embar-

Five Days in July

321

rassment" by placing the accurate story in the pubHc's hands and dismissing Watergate as an action taken by misguided aides without his personal knowledge or sanction. But Dean's successful masking of his

own

which depended in large part on being able to those actions to Mitchell, had the effect of denying that

criminal actions,

attribute

option to Nixon.

The Golden Boy

assault on Dean's credibility soon faded, reduced and in the senators' minds to the status of an attempt to throw mud on the witness. Following Dean at the witness table was a parade of current and former Nixon administration officials. But they stonewalled and their stories conflicted with one another and did not lead the committee any further toward solving what had happened during Watergate. The television ratings of the hearings started to decline. After July 4, the hearings were beginning to bog down, and some committee members were concerned that at the end of testimony they might be left with a series of charges but no clear proof of culpability on the part of the president or his chief aides. On July 5, they talked to Larry Higby, formerly chief aide to Haldeman, who knew about the taping system in the White House. Higby told us in an interview that prior to going to see the committee staff, he had received advice from Haldeman that if the question of the tapes came up, he was to claim that the subject was covered by executive privilege and that he could not talk about it. Haldeman had in the press

some of the tapes at the president's request. The committee staff asked Higby about tapes, and he tried to deflect the question by telling them that the president at the end of the day dictated notes to himself on tape. The staffers were not interested in dictabelt recordings, and asked, "Are there any other tapes that you are aware of?" Higby whispered to his lawyer that he had been told to claim executive privilege on that question, and then proceeded to already listened to

finesse the question

and not mention that claim.

He completed

his

interview with the staff without spilling the secret. "I

went the next day

to Haig,"

Higby

recalls.

"I told "

him,

'AI,

Haig responded committee already knew about the dictabelts, and Higby informed him that the committee staff were zeroing in on the secret taping system. Haig seemed surprised to learn of this taping system, and Higby laid out its dimensions, after which Haig "looked at me astonished and said, i'll get back to you.' And I said, 'Fine. I've got to have guidance before I go up there.' Higby hadn't been told yet that he would definitely be called to testify, but he believed it likely that he would be called.

they're eventually going to get to the taping system.' that the

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

322 Higby

fully expected

Haig to

tell

him, as Haldeman had, that

asked about the taping system he was to say

if

was covered by executive privilege and that he could not talk about it. But the advice he received from Haig was not what Higbv expected. "He got back to me the next day and he said, 'Tell the truth,' meaning, tell the committee about the tapes." Higby was shocked, but believed that the instruction had come from Nixon, and so was prepared to testify fully if asked the right it

question.

A week after Higby's appearance, committee investigators called Alexander Butterfield. Assistant Chief Counsel James Hamilton confirms that "Woodward was of the opinion" Butterfield should be called, but insists (as does Scott Armstrong) that the committee already had Butterfield on. a list of prospective witnesses and would have summoned him anyway. At 2:15 P.M. on the afternoon of Friday, Julv 13, Butterfield sat down with investigators Scott Armstrong, Gene Boyce, and Donald Sanders in room G334 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. As any reader familiar with the Watergate affair knows, it was at this meeting that Butterfield

revealed the existence of the

system, the fruits of which eventually led to

White House taping the end of the Nixon

administration. So, in the history of Watergate, Butterfield's appear-

ance was mightily important.

What

has not been

known

until

now

are the circumstances sur-

rounding Butterfield's disclosure. During fortunes of Richard cally,

Nixon

in

five days in July of 1973, the regard to Watergate changed dramati-

and the reasons can be found

Buzhardt,

w ith

in the actions of

Al Haig and Fred

the apparently unwitting assistance of

Len Garment.

Navy family, Alexander Butterfield had wanted to attend Academy, but failed the physical exam and instead went to UCLA. There he met fellow undergraduate Bob Haldeman; although the two men were not close friends, thev were more than acquaintances Born

into a

the Naval

because their uives were sorority

one another. After

his

sisters

second year

at

who remained

UCLA,

in

in

touch with

1948, Butterfield

entered an Air Force cadet program, and graduated the following year as a

second lieutenant.

He

stayed in the Air Force and rose through the

ranks; his tours of duty included

two years

in

Vietnam on

a special

intelligence assignment before he landed at the Pentagon in

1964,

where he worked on counterinsurgency planning and other tasks that called on his considerable experience with clandestine operations. In 1965 he was assigned to the staff of Joe Califano, and there met Haig. "We were very, verv close when we were in the Johnson administration," Butterfield recalled to us of his relationship with Haig. After

Five Days in July

323

together, he took over from Haig on two key was the resettlement of the Cuban veterans of the Bay of Pigs. The second was as a Haison for Robert McNamara with the White House. He had what he described as a "strange role" that involved "a lot of undercover stuff." Replacing Haig in the job, he spent what he told us was "twenty hours a week minimum [at the White House] ... in private little meetings with [McGeorge] Bundy and [Dean] Rusk because I was McNamara's chart man and I kept all those Vietnam figures. And I was like a fly on the wall in all these meetings up in the president's bedroom at one a.m." By 1968, Butterfield was about as far away from the White House and the Pentagon as he could be, in Canberra, Australia, as the senior American military officer in Australia. Headquartered in the American embassy, he monitored nearly two dozen Defense Department activities in Australia, and also had another mission: "I was the principal point of contact [in the military] for the CIA in Australia," he told us. "I traveled around and I had my own airplane and crew. I was the

some months of working

assignments.

[military's]

The

CIA

first

liaison there."

About what happened next

When in

there are two versions.

Butterfield testified before the

House Judiciary Committee

1974 he asserted that Haldeman had called him, out of the blue,

when he was

in Australia

and had asked him to take the post

in the

White House as "a sort of personal assistant to the President," but "if I wanted to accept I would have to leave the military altogether, retire, which I was eligible to do at that time, and come on to the staff as a civilian." Butterfield reported that he had always considered himself the sort that wouldn't retire before his thirty to thirty-five years were up, but Haldeman pressed him, so he did retire and went to the White House.

Haldeman has always denied that version of the hiring, and said that the impetus came from Butterfield, from whom he had not heard in twenty years, in a letter written to Haldeman from Australia. Haldeman looked into Butterfield's background and decided he would be a good assistant for the president; however, Haldeman added in his memoir, "he insisted that he would have to resign from the Air Force to take the job. I assured him this was not the case, and urged that he stay in the service and just let us have him assigned to the White House a procedure with more than ample precedent." But Butterfield wanted to retire, Haldeman said, and so Haldeman went along with that idea. Writing in 1978, Haldeman said he had been told that Rose

—

Mary Woods believed that Butterfield had been a plant placed inside the White House by some other agency, probably the CIA, and, "I have to agree she may have a point." Haldeman rhetorically asked,

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

324

"Was the White House

filled

with plants from other agencies, most

CIA? The overwhelming evidence

is that it was. But was Butterfield one of them? It's hard for me to believe it." He said that he still considered Butterfield a friend, but wondered, "Why does he distort the facts now, unless he has something to hide?" We confronted Butterfield with Haldeman's version and with the fact that Larry Higby remembers seeing Butterfield's original letter to Haldeman, and Butterfield now agrees that Haldeman is correct in the matter of how he was hired. "Yes, I brought myself to his attention," Butterfield tells us. "I certainly did write to him." Alex Butterfield began his career at the White House on the day Nixon entered it, and from the outset had nearly daily contact with the president. He took notes in meetings and handled the paperwork coming into and going out of Nixon's work basket. He ensured an orderly flow of staff and executive agency memos. During that time, he later testified, "I got a feel for the likes and dislikes of the President, a good feel for his moods, his temperament." In his first year. Butterfield's office was upstairs of the president's. In his second year, when Haldeman sloughed off some of the day-to-day business of running the White House staff, Butterfield inherited the small office Haldeman had used, separated from the Oval Office by a hallway of twenty feet, and took over the task of responding on a "minute-to-minute basis to the President as Haldeman had done that first year." As he had been to McNamara, he was "a fly on the wall" in many meetings with Nixon. Butterfield told us in an interview, "I was not a functionary, although Haldeman and Nixon would like to pretend that I was. I was on the senior staff. My office adjoined the Oval Office, I was in and out more times than anyone. I was the first guy to see the president every morning and the last guy to see him at night. ... I was in a position to know relationships of one aide to another and each to the president." He was in charge of Nixon's papers and the files that would eventually go to the Nixon library. He was secretary to the cabinet, and the liaison between the president and the Secret Service,

particularly the

the Executive Protection Service, the office of the military assistants,

the office of White

House

visitors,

and the P irst Lady's

staff.

Finally, as part of Butterfield's duties as overseer of

White House

House Office of Senot "internal security" (as was suggested by Deep Throat to curity Woodward) which was nothing more than a repository for the files from the FBI background checks on White House staff members and administration, Butterfield supervised the White

—

—

prospective presidential appointees. In February of 1971, after Butterfield

i

had been

in the

White House

t *

Five Days in July

325

two years, Larry Higby approached him with an instruction from the president. Nixon wanted to tape his conversations and meetings. Butterfield understood that the president wished to do so for historical purposes, for use after Nixon left office and when a Nixon presidential library would be established. Higby told Butterfield that the president had a specific prohibition in regard to this taping system. In his

Committee testimony, Butterfield recalled that Higby said, you don't go to the military people on this.' I wasn't sure to whom I would go at that moment, but he said to be sure you don't go to the military people on this. He used the term 'Signal.'

Judiciary

" 'be sure that

Signal denotes the military communications people stationed at the I

I

White House and part of the organization known as the White House Communications Agency." It was for that reason, Butterfield said, that he turned to the technical security division of the Secret Service and its chief, Albert Wong, who then brought in two or three of his electronics experts to install the system.

The

technicians soon placed tiny microphones inside the Oval

Office, five

embedded

in Nixon's desk

and two more on either side of

the fireplace. Similar voice-activated microphones were placed in the president's hideaway office in the Office, in the Lincoln sitting

House, and

EOB, on

room

in the residential part of the

in the president's personal

listening device in the cabinet

the telephones in the Oval

cabin at

room could be

Camp

White

David. Another

activated manually

by

on his desk telephone. Though the microphones could pick up even the softest conversations, the tape recorders were of medium, single-track quality, and when two or more persons Butterfield through buttons

spoke

at

The

once, the sound sequences were often garbled.

taping system was also tied into another system that

know precisely where the As he moved from spot to spot,

let

the

Secret Service

president was at

the day.

agents would signal Nixon's

all

hours of

location to a central office, and the appropriate light in a wall box would be illuminated. When the light for the Oval Office or EOB office was lit, the corresponding taping system for that office would also be

put on

alert.

As Nixon

or

someone else in the room or on the telephone White House spools of tape would begin

spoke, in the basement of the

turning on the recording machines. Secret Service agents changed the tapes as the ends of reels

were reached, and removed, labeled, and EOB room equipped with an alarm.

stored completed tapes in a tiny

According to Butterfield, those who knew of the system when it was first established included himself, the president, Haldeman, Higby, Al Wong, and four or

five

Secret Service agents.

Later,

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

326

Butterfield told his secretary, and in March of 1973, when Butterfield was appointed to the E\A, Butterfield informed his replacement at the White House, Steve Bull, about the taping system.

In April of 1973 Butterfield

—according

to his

own

given to the Senate Watergate committee investigators

account, later

—volunteered

to

appear before the Watergate grand jury about the briefcase stuffed with $350,000 in cash that he had stored in a friend's safe-deposit box at

Haldeman's request

in April of 1972.

He went

to Earl Silbert

and

his

Seymour Glanzer, with "everything he knew," and they put on the stand. The story of that leftover campaign money had become the first of Deep Throat's revelations to Bob Woodward in associate,

him the

briefly

fall

of 1972. Nothing happened to Butterfield as a result of that go-

around with the grand jury, and he proceeded to delve into the exciting E\A. But he also called his "good friend" Len Garment, who had taken over as White House counsel from John Dean, and told him "what had transpired" in the meeting with Silbert

job of administrator of the

and Glanzer. When Al Haig moved to the White House as chief of staff in May 1973, old friends Haig and Butterfield spoke. Butterfield later told the Watergate committee staffers that it had been at that moment that he'd told Haig about the taping system "since he had Haldeman's functions. And he [Haig] said, i know, I know about that.' " This raises questions about Haig's "astonishment" when Higby later told Haig of the taping system in July. Shortly after the May conversation between Haig and Butterfield, according to Woodward and Bernstein, Deep Throat told Woodward to look into Alexander Butterfield, and Woodward got that word to the Senate committee staff. On Friday, July 13, when Butterfield sat in the room with the three committee staffers, he told us that he had assumed he had been summoned because "of the position I had and the place where I sat and the things that I knew. 'lo give light and perspective as to what was going on" in the Nixon White House. And so he calmly answered questions about his four-plus years there, his handling of the paperroles and personalities of the other people on and so on, down to the affair of the cash-stuffed briefcase and recital of the particulars of that to the grand jury and to Len

work and schedules, the the his

staff,

Garment.

Once with

a

again in this strange history, investigators sat in a closed

man and

room

asked standard questions, as they had done in the quiet

of the polygraph room

at

Stewart at the close of 1971.

the Pentagon suite

And once

commanded by Don

again, a question

prompted an

Five Days in July

327

answer that had not been foreseen by those who asked the question. In the Senate committee staff room, Don Sanders, the former FBI colleague and friend of Don Stewart, had become annoyed as Alexander Butterfield calmly took the investigators on a scenic tour of his years as a fly on the wall of the Nixon White House. They were under a mandate from the senators to come up with some real evidence on which Nixon could be pinned to the mat or exonerated. They had struck out with Higby, but Sanders had remembered a document already in their hands, and had brought it to this interview. Weeks earlier, Buzhardt had called Minority Counsel Fred Thompson and related to him Nixon's quite detailed versions of his February, March, and April 1973 meetings with John Dean. Thompson had prepared a memo of his conversation with Buzhardt, and Sanders asked Butterfield to read

As

it.

Butterfield read the

Thompson memo

that afternoon, Butter-

he immediately suspected that Buzhardt had lifted the information from Nixon's tapes. For months, as he had watched field later told us,

the Watergate story unfold in the press, he later told us, "I'd think to it's all there on tape. Someday those tapes will come out. was one of the very few people who knew about them." But when he first saw the document, he was not asked a direct question about a taping system, and so finessed the matter. Later in the interview, though, Sanders pressed on just this point: How could the White House have such a detailed account of the conversations? Butterfield first fudged and said that after meetings Nixon often recorded his recollections on a dictabelt, but did admit that what Buzhardt told Thompson was certainly quite detailed. Sanders pushed on, reminding Butterfield of what John Dean had said when he had testified that during one meeting with the president Dean had gotten the feeling that the conversation was being taped because Nixon had turned away from him and had talked almost in a whisper about a most important subject, executive clemency. Did Dean have any reason to believe that he was being taped?

myself, Jesus, I

knew

I

—

Sanders asked.

—

—

At a crossroads, Butterfield like Radford decided to give the complete answer; this time, he'd been asked a direct question about the tapes. No, he responded. Dean did not know about the taping system, but all of the president's conversations in the Oval Office were recorded. Gushing on, he described in quite a bit of detail the establishment and operation of the taping system. Reaching the end of his description, he told his stunned audience, as thev recorded in their own notes, "This is all something I know the President did not want revealed, but you asked me, and I feel it is something you ought to

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

328

know about

in

your investigations.

the information

I

was told no one was to know about

I

have told you."

At that very moment, President Nixon was in Bethesda Naval Hospital in suburban Maryland, suffering from viral pneumonia. He had awakened in the early hours of the previous morning with a high fever and complaining of severe chest pains. That day he spent in bed. He had one tense conversation with Sam Ervin in regard to the committee's request for all White House papers that might relate to the Senate's investigation. Nixon had refused to turn over the papers, citing executive privilege. When his condition worsened and a chest X ray showed that he had viral pneumonia, the decision was made to move him to the hospital.

Nixon continued his

I

to

work from

his sickbed because, as

he wrote

in

autobiography, was determined

out

mv

to

duties as

underwent and Haig.

tests I

show

that even in the hospital

As

President.

and X-rays,

I

I

was able

to carry

received inhalation therapy and

I

continued to take

calls

phoned Kissinger and reviewed the plans

and see Ziegler for Phase

IV of The

our economic policv with [Treasury Secretary George] Schultz.

worst thing about the pneumonia was the inability to sleep because the

discomfort was so great. During the nights minutes.

I

ended up staying on the phone

on the day's

I

lay

awake counting the

until late at night, checking

events.

Nixon may well have believed that he was on top of the day's events, but during that weekend the president remained completely unaware that his political fate was being seriously undermined by the prospective

testimony before the Watergate committee of Alexander Butter-

field.

That Nixon remained ignorant of Butterfield's doings during the weekend of July 14 and 15 has been regarded by Watergate historians and journalists as little more than an oddity to be briefly noted. It was much more than that. After showing Butterfield to the door. Democratic staffers Armstrong and Boyce rushed to find Sam Dash at his office, while Republican counsel Sanders went on a similar mission to locate Fred Thompson. When Armstrong and Boyce came into his office, Sam Dash later wrote in his book Chief Counsel, "they both looked wild-eyed. Scott was sweating and

in a state

As soon as he had closed mouth as he told me about [WeJ became overwhelmed with

of great excitement.

the door the words tumbled out of his Butterfield's astounding revelation.

.

.

.

Five Days in July

the explosive

meaning of the existence of such

329

tapes.

We now knew

there had been a secret, irrefutable 'witness' in the Oval Office each

Dean met with Nixon, and if we could get now do what we had thought would be impossible time

the tapes

—

we could

establish the truth

or falsity of Dean's accusations against the President."

Thompson was at the bar at the Carroll Arms hotel, having a with a reporter, when Sanders dragged him outside to a small

drink park,

checked to see if they could be overheard, and blurted out the news. There were two problems with any proposed Butterfield testimony.

The

first was that he did not want to testify and had suggested that the committee get Higby or Haldeman to testify in public about the taping system. Second, he was scheduled to leave on Tuesday, July 17, for the Soviet Union to help negotiate a new aviation treaty. Learning this. Dash found Sam Ervin and they agreed that Butterfield should be compelled to testify on Monday, and Ervin authorized Dash to prepare a subpoena for Butterfield. Eor his part, Fred Thompson and Assistant Minority Counsel Howard Liebengood met with Howard Baker on Saturday morning. As Thompson later wrote, "Baker thought it inconceivable that Nixon would have taped his conversations if they contained anything incriminating. I agreed. The more I thought about what had occurred, the more I considered the possibility that Butterfield had been sent to us as part of a strategy: the president was orchestrating the whole affair and had intended that the tapes be discovered." For that reason, the Republicans came to the same conclusion already reached by Dash and Ervin, that Butterfield should give his testimony in public as soon as .

.

.

possible.

Thompson may sent to the

well have been correct that Butterfield had been

committee

as part of a strategy

—but

if

he was,

it

was not

the president's strategy.

That Saturday morning, as Baker met with his aides, Butterfield flew to New Hampshire to dedicate a new air traffic control facility in Nashua County, and he told us he was so unconcerned about his possible testimony to the Senate that he didn't even prepare for an

appearance before the Senate. have the slightest clue" that the committee would call him on Monday, he told us. "No, no why would I ever do that? I didn't give it one goddamn thought. [Meeting with the Senate staffers] was just another session to me. I know for a fact that I never did anticipate being called by the committee. So I never would have written out any statements, or answers or comments or anything like that having to do with me testifying." "I didn't

to testify

—

— EXIT THE PRESIDENT

330

The

through the weekend Butterfield was deeply concerned about what he had told the Senate staffers. In the records of the Watergate committee, now located in the National Archives, are thirty-one pages of Butterfield's handwritten notes, inscribed over that weekend. They show a man not only concerned about testifying, but even more worried about being forced to resign from the FAA because of his involvement in the handling of the evidence, however, shows that

all

$350,000 campaign fund. We know these notes are authentic and contemporary because they were subpoenaed immediately after Butterfield's appearance, and the transmittal note from Butterfield's secretary

own

says that "this material represents a series of his

possible statements (short and long) that he might use

before your Committee.

It

includes, too,

some

initial drafts

when

of

testifying

anticipated questions

and the approximate answers he would give to such questions." In a long preamble, Butterfield denied any involvement in or

knowledge of the Watergate operation of the misuse of funds, and notes that he appeared voluntarily before the grand jury. He said he had worked for his country and its Presidents "with honor and integrity" for a quarter century, and would continue to do so. He worried that his testimony might be taken out of context in news reports, and pointed out that he had worked in close physical proximity to the president for most of Nixon's first term and that he was now the FAA administrator. He wrote that it would be a "gross" and "unconscionable" injustice to distort in any way his statements, "to me personally" as well as to the president and to the FAA. Butterfield's most revealing words were saved for the issue of a possible resignation. If that were to be brought up, his notes show, he intended to use as a lifeline his friendship with Alexander Haig. If asked to resign, he would not, and would say that he had no reason to resign because

My this.

record

is

similar to that of General Haig.

He knows

Would

it

of

.

.

.

my

not seem very odd to you then

that the President

would ask me

that he asks General

.

.

.

The

President knows

long and close association with General Haig.

Haig

—

use this one example

just to

same breath become chief of

to resign ... in almost the

[into the

White House

to

staff]?

Most of the notes

Butterfield

made

that

weekend centered on the

$350,000 fund, and only in the last two pages did he prepare testimony on the tapes. He had assumed that I ligby and laldeman had also been asked about the tapes in their interviews with the committee statf, that I

Five Days in July

331

they had talked about the taping system, and that he was being asked "so that the fact could be corroborated."

We told Butterfield about his handwritten notes, and he says that he must have forgotten that he wrote them and pronounced himself "amazed" that he didn't remember them.

The

notes

that Butterfield considered his friendship with

he need a defense. We asked he had talked to Haig that weekend. "No," he told us. "I have to chalk that up with my preoccupation with the other things

Haig

essential to his defense, should

Butterfield just

show

if

was doing."

he agreed, in retrospect

"seems like deal" for him not to have warned the White House, but I

didn't

Yes,

it

a terribly big at

the time

it

seem so important. was important because

It a warning to the president that weekend would have allowed him to mount a defense, namely, a written directive saying that the taping system was covered by executive privilege and that executive branch employee Butterfield would have to consider himself constrained from testifying about it. But Nixon was not informed about Butterfield's forthcoming revelations until there were very few hours left in which to act to restrain the damaging testimony. As Butterfield's handwritten notes for the testimony also show, he considered himself an intensely loyal man. It strains credulity that he did not call Haig, a man to whom he was loyal. We can't prove that he did. But someone did inform the general, possibly on Saturday but certainly by Sunday, that there would be testimony about the taping system in the coming week. Garment told us that he was called to the White House for a meeting on Sunday evening, July 15, with Haig and Buzhardt, at which the two men told Garment they were expecting testimony about the taping system before the Senate committee the

next day.

Fred Thompson wrote that he talked to Buzhardt at the White House on Sunday afternoon. He reported in his memoir that he told Buzhardt that the committee was aware that "every conversation in the White House is on tape. I know you realize the significance of that. It's not my place to give you advice, but I think that if I were you I'd start making plans immediately to get those tapes together and get them up here as soon as possible. There was a short pause, then Buzhardt said, " 'Well I think that is significant, ///'/ is true. We'll get on it tomorrow.' Sam Dash claims that Thompson made the call even earlier, on Friday evening, but Thompson says that Dash is mistaken. Steve Bull, also at home that weekend, received a call from Scott Armstrong telling him to be ready to testify on Monday, and not telling him why. Bull believed that the committee was zeroing in on the taping

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

332

system, and immediately called Buzhardt to say

so. Buzhardt brushed "No, they couldn't know about that [the taping system]." On Monday, Buzhardt called Bull back to say he wouldn't have to testify because Butterfield was going to do so. Buzhardt's reported laconic attitude toward Bull and Thompson on what was clearly a bombshell seems to reflect Haig's earlier colloquy with Larry Higby. Haig already knew that the committee was hot on the trail of the taping system, and had told Higby, more than a week earlier, to testify truthfully about it if asked. The information that someone was going to testify about it on Monday, then, would have come as no surprise. Without informing Nixon, or even asking the president's opinion, Buzhardt and Haig had decided to allow this great and dangerous secret to become public knowledge, and take the

off the warning, telling Bull,

consequences.

Woodward

also reports that

he learned of Nixon's taping system

in

home on Saturday, from someone All the President's Men identifies as "a senior member of the committee's investigative staff," who congratulated Woodward on having suggested they question Buta

phone

call at

and told him that Butterfield had spilled "a story which would universe as none other would." T) Fred Thompson, this was one of the passages in the Woodward-Bernstein book that proved Scott Armstrong was a conduit for information to Woodward. But Armstrong denies he leaked any information to his friend at the Post, insisting he and Woodward were "scrupulous" in their dealings. "My conscience is clear," he says. terfield

disturb the presidential

After learning of this

Woodward conveyed sat

on

their

hands

universe-disturbing potential

testimony.

the information to Bernstein, and then they both all

day.

Inexplicably, they ceased to behave as

reporters in possession of an

enormous scoop, and

supposed reasoning behind their silence

lies in

fell

silent.

The

the following passage of

their book.

The

reporters were again concerned about a

White House

set-up.

A

taping system could be disclosed, they reasoned, and then the President

could serve up doctored or manufactured tapes to exculpate himself and his

men. Or, having known the tapes were

have induced

Dean

—or anyone

then feign ignorance himself. the

else

—

rolling, the President

might

to say incriminating things

Ihey decided

and

not to pursue the story for

moment.

This reasoning is absurd. Legitimate reporters in pursuit of a story generally do not worry whether a newly uncovered piece of evidence is incriminating or exculpatory; the fact that it has been uncovered must be presented to the public.

Five Days in July

333

Moreover, there were clear dangers for Woodward and Bernstein in holding back what they knew.

How

could they be certain that some

other reporter, one with different motivations, would not be informed

by the same or another

staff

member and would

not beat them into

print on the story?

In a second passage of their book that relates to Butterfield, there are

some

who

also

clues that

was privy

Woodward spoke

to

someone

else that

to Butterfield's revelation. Butterfield

is

weekend

reported as

having told the investigators that Ehrlichman and Kissinger were

unaware of the taping system, and Woodward broods on what this might mean: that Kissinger "wouldn't like the idea of secret taping systems plucking his sober words and advice out of the air whether for posterity or for some grand jury." According to committee staff notes of the July 13 interview, however, Butterfield hadn't said a word about Kissinger knowing or not knowing about the taping system in his session with the Senate investigators. It seems likely that Woodward had talked to someone not on the committee staff that weekend, someone who knew quite a bit I about the taping system, enough to assert baldly that Kissinger had not known about it. The most logical candidate is Haig. According to their book. Woodward and Bernstein didn't tell anyone at the Post about Butterfield's revelation until 9:30 p.m. on Saturday evening, when Woodward spoke with a sleepy Ben Bradlee, who supposedly rated the story only a B-plus and suggested that the (reporters not go all out to "see what more you can find out." The Posfs decision to hold back the story had the same effect as the actions of Haig and Buzhardt it prevented Nixon from learning about Butterfield's potential disclosures in time for him to take action to head

—

.

—

'"-

off those disclosures.

On Sunday

afternoon, after his return from ribbon-cutting, Butterfield

||

iL

from Investigator Armstrong,

who

informed Butterfield that he would be called to testify the next morning, July 16. Quite upset, Butterfield went personally to see Howard Baker at his home in hopes of having the appearance canceled or postponed. According to received a call

Baker was sympathetic but not encouraging, and suggested that Butterfield call the White House for help. Butterfield turned to Len Garment, but he was out of town and Butterfield left a message for Garment to call. As the reader will recall, when Butterfield had Butterfield,

testified

before the grand jury in April, he had phoned

immediately afterward with

When Garment landed

a

summary

Garment

of his testimony.

Washington's National Airport on Sunday he was paged to proceed immediately to the White House. Arriving at at

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

334

his office,

he found Haig and Buzhardt waiting for him, along with the

Buzhardt and Haig wanted Garment was the person who had talked to the committee about the tapes. Garment called Butterfield, who confirmed that he was going to testify the next day, and Garment so informed Buzhardt and Haig.

phone message from out

to find

They

if

Nixon.

didn't

still

Garment

tell

the president.

offered us four explanations

First,

and "why

Butterfield.

Butterfield

they didn't yet have

all

why Haig

decided not to

the facts. Second,

"We

send the president up the wall?" Third,

Nixon was

tell ill,

always thought

would be protected by do anything to halt the Butterfield testimony. These suggestions do not adequately explain Haig's decision. The inner circle did have all the facts, and the president had continued to work though he was ill. Nixon actually had

that

it

[the revelation of the taping system]

And

executive privilege."

fourth,

it

was too

late to

time to delay or stop the testimony, as the events of the following day

would shortly make act quickly,

it

clear.

Moreover,

when

the White

House wanted

to

could.

White House logs show that Haig met with Nixon in the hospital between 10:15 a.m. and noon on Saturday, and twice on Sunday between one and two in the afternoon. Haig hadn't told Nixon about the colloquy with Higby earlier, he didn't tell him that Buzhardt had learned from Fred Thompson that someone was to testify about the taping system the next day, and he didn't tell him about Garment's Sunday conversation with Butterfield. Haig finally got around to informing the president about the potentially explosive Butterfield testimony on

Monday morning, and he

there was no

way

seen, there

also told the president that

to stop Butterfield's public revelation.

—and

was plenty of time

As we have

—

plenty of precedent

for the

president to sign a letter to the committee and to Butterfield saying that his proposed testimony

was prevented on the grounds of executive

privilege.

When Nixon

learned on

Monday morning

of Butterfield's proposed

"I was shocked. ... I had White House taping system would at least executive privilege would have

testimony, he writes in his autobiography, believed that the existence of the

never be revealed.

I

been raised by any

And

thought that staff

Press Secretary

doctors and Haig

member Ron

who saw

before verifying

its

existence."

Ziegler, one of the few people other than

the president that weekend, says that he did

Monday morning, knew earlier, none of

not learn of Butterfield's impending testimony until either,

them

and that

told him.

if

Haig, Buzhardt, or Ciarment

What would he

have done,

we asked

Ziegler,

if

he had

— Five Days in July

known?

"I

would have

told the president.

have withheld from him.

I

...

335

I

certainly

would not

can't conceive of that information being

withheld from the president for an entire weekend." And Ziegler added that if the inner circle "had discussed not telling him because we didn't want to bother him I certainly would have remembered that,

and

it

didn't happen."

Monday morning subpoena, was a trim

at

at the

11:15, Butterfield,

who had

not been issued a

barber shop at the Sheraton Carlton Hotel having

when he received a phone call from Assistant Chief Counsel Jim who had tracked Butterfield down through his FAA secre-

Hamilton,

Hamilton told him he must appear that afternoon, and Butterfield was very, very upset and profane," he told us, "and sitting in the barber's chair I said, 'I will not do that. I'm not going up there and you can tell the committee chairman that.' " The television set was on in the barber shop, and Butterfield rather helplessly watched his fate unfold on the screen. He saw Hamilton approach Ervin's chair and whisper something to the chairman, and saw Ervin's characteristic eyebrows move rapidly up and down before he whispered something in Hamilton's ear. The television then showed Hamilton walking deliberately out of the hearing room, and a few moments later, the phone rang again for Butterfield in the barber chair. According to Butterfield, Hamilton told him that Ervin said, "If you're not in his office by one o'clock we will have federal marshals pick you up on the tary.

refused. "I

street."

Hamilton told us that the threat was have needed the

full

a "bluff"

by Ervin, who would

vote of the Senate in order to proceed with the

But Butterfield believed the threat. In a panic, he at the White House and told Garment that he had to testify within two hours. Butterfield recalled for us that Garment "sort of lashed out at me. I always thought Garment was my " pal. He said, 'Don't call us for help. Go get your own lawyer.' In other words, a last chance for the White House to claim executive privilege on the tapes was not seized. The effect of his conversation with Garment was to render Butterfield contrite and ready to testify so ready that even when the subpoena was not fully prepared at the time Butterfield arrived at Ervin's office at 1:00 p.m., he waited patiently until it was finished and Ervin signed it at 1:45, and then entered the hearing room for his few minutes in front of the television cameras. Television viewers throughout the country were astonished to hear about a secret taping system in the White House, one that foreign visitors and even most people in the administration did not know had been in existence. Clearly, intimate conversations had been taped arrest of Butterfield.

called

Len Garment again

—

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

336

without participants' knowledge. place in

which supposedly

The Oval

Office was revealed as a

private conversations with the president

were clandestinely recorded. In a flash, millions of viewers gained new understanding of the dark side of the personality of Richard Nixon. The moment Butterfield completed his electrifying testimony, a Capitol policeman handed an envelope to Sam Dash that had just arrived from the White House, and Dash gave it to Ervin. Inside was a letter from Fred Buzhardt confirming "the facts stated to your Committee today by Mr. Alexander Butterfield that the President's meetings and conversations in the White House had been recorded since the spring of 1971." The letter further stated that the system was still in use.

Secret Service Technical Security Division Chief Al at

Wong

arrived

12:30 p.m. the next day for an executive session with the Senate

committee, accompanied by an attorney from the Treasury Depart-

from the president that directed Wong and all Secret Service personnel to give no testimony to the Ervin committee. Such matters, the president wrote, were indeed covered by ment, and armed with

a letter

executive privilege. If

someone had been trying

to injure the president, they could not

have engineered a more deleterious chain of events than these

five days surrounded Alex Butterfield's revelation about the White House taping system. As we shall see in later chapters, on several more occasions during Nixon's final year in office, similar patterns of seemingly inadvertent failures to correctly inform the president can be discerned and again it was Chief of Staff Haig who failed to inform the president. Errors of omission or commission? The senators accepted the letter from Al Wong, dismissed him, and then discussed the matter. They could proceed with contempt proceedings against Wong and other Secret Service agents for refusing to answer questions, but, Sam Dash later wrote, Senator Ervin "expressed the view that this would not be fair to these minor public officials who were caught in the middle between an order from the President of the United States and a subpoena from a Senate committee. He said the committee's dispute was with the President and not with the Secret Service men." Shortly thereafter, the senators decided to subpoena the actual tapes, the White House refused to turn them over, and the year-long,

in July that

ultimately decisive final battle of the

Nixon administration began.

21

THESAMDAy NIGHT MASSACRE

FRIDAY, July 20, 1973, President Richard Nixon was released from Bethesda Naval Hospital after his bout with viral pneumonia. He returned to the White House, where the staff greeted him in the Rose Garden and he made a speech. "What we were elected to do, we are going to do, and let others wallow in Watergate," he told the crowd, which included the press corps. Nixon stayed only briefly, then went to Camp David accompanied by his friend Bebe Rebozo, his wife, Pat, his secretary. Rose Mary Woods, and Mamie Eisenhower, widow of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He also took with him two matters that demanded immediate attention, a letter from Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox to Fred Buzhardt, and another letter addressed to the president from the Ervin committee. Each

demanded some of the

tapes.

Two

days earlier, in the

wake of Butterfield's testimony, Alexander Haig had ordered the White House secret taping system shut down, had taken control of two and a half years worth of accumulated tapes, and had designated his deputy, retired

Major General John C. Bennett,

tapes.

337

as the

new

custodian of the

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

338

Special Prosecutor Archibald

Cox had been

thorn in the presi-

a

To

dent's side ever since Elliot Richardson's confirmation hearings.

ensure confirmation as attorney general, Richardson had promised the Senate that he would appoint an independent prosecutor to oversee the

Watergate case, one

whom

he pledged to remove only for "extraordi-

nary impropriety." Richardson was confirmed, and then had to make good on his promise. On May 18, the day after the Senate Watergate

Cox had been one Harvard Law School, and was considered

hearings began, he announced Cox's appointment. of Richardson's professors at a leading scholar.

Cox was also a man Nixon almost had to hate, a card-carrying member of the Eastern liberal establishment, a former solicitor general under John Kennedy who had written legislation for Kennedy in the Senate and speeches for him in the 1960 presidential campaign. But

when

Cox's

name was announced by Richardson,

the atmosphere in

the country was such that Nixon could not object. Richardson and

both took

Among

office

on the same day,

those watching

Cox

Cox

in separate swearing-in ceremonies.

repeat the oath were two longtime friends,

Senator Ted Kennedy and his sister-in-law Ethel Kennedy, Senator Robert E Kennedy. As

J.

Anthony Lukas

widow

of

reports in his book

"The President's suspicions were exacerbated still further staff Cox selected. Of the thirty-seven lawyers he ultimately

Nightmare^

by the

all but one were Ivy Leaguers, eighteen from Harvard; most were Democrats; many had worked in the Justice Department under Robert Kennedy or Nicholas deB. Katzenbach." Nixon was alarmed by Cox's credentials and cohorts; Alexander Haig must have been alarmed by Cox's almost immediate attempts to widen his investigation beyond the Watergate break-in and cover-up to include the Huston Plan, the 1969-1971 wiretaps, and the Plumbers. These last two touched Haig personally. When Cox asked Buzhardt in writing for detailed records and logs on the Plumbers, Buzhardt

recruited,

refused.

Cox then

threatened to bring indictments against those

who

had conducted and supervised the Dr. Fielding office burglary, and was warned by Buzhardt that such prosecutions would threaten national security because the Plumbers had been involved in other highly classified matters.

Cox was

Nixon himself became incensed

looking into the financing of his

home

in

at

news reports

that

San Clemente. Cox

issued a statement saying he wasn't conducting such an inquiry, but

would not

entirely rule

one out

if

evidence of wrongdoing was brought

to the fore.

—

Cox's July 18 letter to Buzhardt the one Nixon had to consider at Camp David requested eight presidential recordings, "material and

—

The Saturday Night Massacre

339

important evidence" in the criminal investigation of former presidential Most were tapes of dates on which John Dean had testified that

aides.

Sam Ervin's letter had a broader compass, requestdocuments and tapes under control of the White House that relate to the matters the Select Committee is authorized to investigate." During the weekend, Nixon and Haig discussed these letters and the president made up his mind what to do. On Monday morning, the White House's reply to the two letters was released. One missive was written by Charles Alan Wright, a constitutional scholar from the University of Texas who had just been retained as a member of the Nixon defense team. Wright told Cox that: he met with Nixon. ing

"all

It is

relevant

for the President,

and only for the President,

to

weigh whether the

incremental advantage that these tapes would give you in criminal

proceedings

would do

justifies

the serious and lasting hurt that disclosure of

to the confidentiality that

is

them

imperative to the effective func-

tioning of the Presidency. In this instance the President has concluded that

it

would not serve the public

interest to

make

the tapes available.

Wright further reminded Cox that while he might consider his post "an office of the court," he was principally an employee of the executive branch, and therefore "subject to the instructions of your superiors, up to

and including the President, and can have access to Presidential

papers onlv as and

if

the President sees

fit

to

make them

available to

you."

At the same time, Nixon wrote

Sam Ervin that powers" and executive privilege to

a personal letter to

cited the principles of "separation of

turn

down

the request for tapes.

The

president also explained that the

tapes

would not existence

them.

The

and what

settle the central issues

became publicly known,

before your Committee. Before their I

personally listened to a

tapes are entirely consistent with I

what

I

know

number of

to be the truth

have stated to be the truth. However, as in any verbatim

recording of informal conversations, they contain

comments

that persons

with different perspectives and motivations would inevitably interpret in different ways.

As these two letters went out, Haig called Richardson, Cox's boss, complain about a questionnaire the Special Prosecutor had sent to government agencies seeking information about "electronic surveilto

lance."

Richardson

later

said

in

a

sworn statement

to the

House

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

340

Judiciary

Committee

Haig

that

said the "boss"

was very "uptight"

about Cox's questions, and bluntly warned Richardson that to have a confrontation,

we

will have it,"

Nixon wanted

"if

we have

"a tight line

Cox does not agree, we will get rid of Cox." Richardson attempted to get Cox to back away from the various inquiries that Haig had told him the "boss" wanted to say were under the umbrella of national security, but Cox resisted the drawn with no further mistakes," and

"if

effort to limit his jurisdiction.

Ervin was caustic that Monday as he commented on the letter at an open session of the committee: "The president says that [the tapes] are susceptible of, the way I construe it, two different interpretations, one favorable to his aides, and one not favorable to his aides." There was laughter in the room. There was none as the committee voted to subpoena the tapes and papers from the president. And Archibald Cox showed just what he thought of Haig's attempt to brush him aside by issuing a subpoena in the name of the grand jury, now for nine tapes and other materials, a subpoena whose receipt in the early evening by Fred Buzhardt made the tapes potential evidence in a criminal proceeding-

Two

Judge Sirica, Nixon wrote that the president was not subject to "compulsory process" from the courts and that it would be "inconsistent with the public interest and with the days

later,

in a letter to

Constitutional position of the Presidency to

make

available" the nine

recordings. However, Nixon volunteered to turn over the papers listed

on the subpoena, two political memoranda; by offering these voluntarily, Nixon avoided complying with any part of the subpoena. Next day, Sirica issued a "show cause" order requiring Nixon to explain why he should not be forced to comply with the grand jury subpoena. Thus the issue was joined and started on its way toward an ultimate

showdown

in the

Supreme Court.

At the end of July the issue was complicated as Haldeman appeared before the Ervin committee and testified that under instructions from the president he had listened to two of the subpoenaed Nixon-Dean conversations in which he had also been a participant, and that he had done so well after he had resigned from the White House. He had even been allowed to take one of the tapes home overnight. The admission

seemed

to strengthen Cox's case.

How

could the president shield his

tapes behind a claim of executive privilege

if a

private citizen could

one at home? On August 7, the president's lawyers responded with Sirica's show cause order, contending that if (>()x was able to compel Nixon to turn listen to

over the tapes, "the

damage

to the institution of the Presidency will be

The Saturday Night Massacre severe and irreparable."

Cox

341

struck back on August 13, stating that the

president was not exempt "from the guiding principle that the public, in pursuit of justice,

has a right to every man's evidence." These

on August 22, and courtroom to issue his

positions were reargued in person in front of Sirica a

week

later,

Sirica called everyone into his

decision.

The judge declared that Nixon must surrender the tapes, agreeing with Cox that "simply because it is the President of the United States who holds the evidence," the courts were not constrained from obtaining that evidence. However, also agreeing with Nixon's need to keep

some

would he would review them in

materials shielded, Sirica ruled that the tape recordings

not go directly to the grand jury, but that

camera, and then turn over to the grand jury just those portions of the

tapes that he thought were not covered

"No

by executive

privilege.

court had ever before in our history compelled a President to

produce documents that he had determined not to surrender," Nixon wrote of this decision in his 1978 memoir. "Because of the principle of separation of powers, a court can issue an order, but a President has a right and some scholars would argue, a responsibility not to obey that order if it infringes on the prerogatives of his independent branch of government. I felt then that it was fully within my power to refuse to obey Sirica's ruling." It was only because of the "political reality of the Watergate situation" that he did not do so. Instead, he

—

—

.

.

.

appealed.

Both Cox and Nixon appealed the decision. It took two weeks for Columbia to ask that the parties compromise. Perhaps lawyers for both sides could review the tapes and decide what would be forwarded to the grand jury. Despite three days of negotiations between Cox and the White House during which Cox suggested that an outside, third party verify the tapes before they were submitted to the grand jury no compromise could be reached, and the court was so informed on September 20. Shortly, the appellate court would issue a decision. Nixon anticipated that the appellate decision would go against him, and decided it was time to start transcribing the tapes. Rose Mary Woods agreed to do it, and he sent her to Camp David with several machines and tapes. Nixon's plan, he later recalled in RN, was to offer typed summaries of the tapes "after national security discussions and other matters irrelevant to Watergate had been deleted." What happened during the attempts to transcribe the tapes will be discussed in

the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of

—

—

detail in the following chapter.

As

the president waited for the appellate court decision, he was

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

342

occupied with other serious matters.

He was

aware that lawyers for were locked in a battle with Elliot

Vice President Spiro Agnew Richardson and other Justice Department officials that would soon lead to Agnew's resignation. Back in August, when Nixon had first learned the nature and severity of the charges against Agnew tax evasion, the president had sent Haig to see Agnew, and bribery, and extortion

—

—

Haig had suggested that the vice president resign. Agnew refused. In September, at Nixon's request, Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen examined the evidence against Agnew and declared it airtight. Since Nixon was very poor at confronting people, he sent Haig and Buzhardt to convey Petersen's bad news to Agnew, and the vice president's lawyers responded by beginning a plea-bargaining process with Richardson. On October 10, Agnew had his resignation letter delivered, as required, to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, while he himself stood in a Baltimore court and pleaded no contest to one charge of tax evasion.

A second embroiled

Nixon was the Yom Kippur War, which Arab enemies during the second week of

serious matter for

and

Israel

its

October 1973.

A

third matter only lightly touched

Nixon

When Cox

tried to

would inevitably

trip over

have disturbed Haig.

that week, but

must

pursue the Plumbers, an

Moorer- Radford, Buzhardt complained to Richardson that Cox was edging into national security matters and must be constrained. Responding to the White House, Richardson went to Cox and forged an agreement: The Special Prosecutor would not move on any case involving national security without investigation that

first

consulting the attorney general.

Cox's interest in the Plumbers centered on what he saw as the complicity of three former presidential aides, Ehrlichman, Krogh, and

Colson, in the Dr. Fielding office break-in.

The

have Moorer-Radford in their sights, and there

prosecutors did not

no evidence that they even knew about it but indictment of these three men on a matter having to do with the Plumbers might allow the prosecutors to peek through a keyhole and see things that might lead them to the military espionage. Moreover, since these three men were not expected to go down without a fight, they could be expected to raise as a defense the idea that what they had done was in the interests of national security, and in attempts to prove their point, might bring Moorer-Radford to is

—

the surface.

On

October

1

1 ,

the day after Agnew's resignation and amid the

turmoil over the Arab-Israeli war.

Cox announced

Krogh had Krogh had told

that Rgil

been indicted for perjury in the Dr. Fielding break-in.

The Saturday Night Massacre the grand jury he had

343

known nothing about Hunt's and Liddy's

travels

to Cahfornia.

"The Krogh indictment took Richardson completely by surprise and signaled the possible onset of a new crisis with the White House," James Doyle wrote in his memoir, Not Above the Law. Doyle, a newspaperman, was spokesman for the Special Prosecutor's office during the Watergate investigations. "Richardson thought he had a specific agreement with Cox that none of those cases involving the national security question would be moved to the indictment stage Now Buzhardt was on the phone without prior notice to him. .

.

.

demanding an explanation."

admonKrogh indictment

In his office the next day, according to Doyle, Richardson ished

Cox

for "a serious lapse," insisting that the

on national security cases. Cox, in turn, was "surprised and defensive," reminding his former student that their agreement did not include perjury cases. While national security might be a factor in the Dr. Fielding break-in. Cox said, it was not relevant to Krogh's having testified falsely to the grand jury. Richardson grew more philosophical, accepted Cox's explanation, and warned him that "we are heading into a difficult period." According to Doyle, Richardson mentioned to Cox the possibility that they might both be fired. Later, in a newspaper story that discussed the events leading up to the firing of Cox and the resignation of the Saturday Night Massacre Richardson Woodward and Bernstein would cite unnamed sources as saying that Buzhardt had gone to the Justice Department and met with Cox and Richardson "to buttress his argument that national security interests were more important than bringing prosecution against Ehrlichman, Colson and Krogh in certain cases." Cox and Richardson were reported as "less than responsive" even though Buzhardt made "partial disclosure of the activities in question." In a small paragraph in that story, the reporters gave a clue as to what the Saturday Night violated their understanding

—

—

Massacre had really been all about: "The sources said that Richardson's and Cox's unwillingness to take White House direction on these indictments helped precipitate the

confrontation''''

that led to the Massacre.

added for emphasis.) On October 12, the same day that Cox and Richardson commiserated over the likelihood that both would be fired, the appellate court ruled that Nixon must turn over the tapes to Sirica because the president "is not above the law's commands." The 5-2 decision pointed out that Nixon had not invoked executive privilege when he let aides testify about the disputed conversations before the Ervin committee,

(Italics

and that, as

Cox had argued,

the tapes had

become important evidence

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

344

in

grand jury proceedings concerning those aides. The president was Supreme Court before he would have

given one week to appeal to the to

hand over the

tapes.

Later that day, Nixon had Haig inform House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford that he was Nixon's choice to become the new vice president. Ford was willing to accept, and around six that evening the White House made the public announcement of Ford's nomination. The timing was a deliberate attempt to soften headlines about the appellate ruling.

Camp

The

David with

following day, October 13,

his wife, his

Nixon

retreated to

daughter Julie, and her husband, David

Eisenhower.

had been an incredible week for Nixon, who now had six days which to make an appeal to the Supreme Court or be forced to turn over the tapes to Sirica. In the seclusion of his mountain retreat, Nixon and his associates decided on a new strategy. Nixon recalled in his memoir that "Fred Buzhardt suggested Senator John Stennis of Mississippi" as an outside, third party who could listen to the subpoenaed conversations, compare them to the actual recordings, and then submit a verified version of transcripts to Sirica. Here was a compromise that might satisfy everyone and avoid a confrontation in the Supreme Court. The choice of Stennis was attractive to Nixon, and even more so to Buzhardt and Haig. Stennis was seventy-two, a diehard Dixiecrat and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He often voted with the Republicans but was accorded respect by the Democrats because of his seniority. Buzhardt had been a protege of Stennis' friend and fellow Dixiecrat, Senator Strom Thurmond, and Buzhardt knew Stennis well. In 1970, when Buzhardt had been nominated as general counsel of the Department of Defense, Stennis had swiftly moved the nomination through his committee and had lavished praise on Buzhardt. Haig had also worked closely with Stennis in recent years when the executive branch had It

left in

sought to keep the

The

legislative

branch informed about military matters.

previous October, after Haig had been nominated by Nixon to

become

a full general, Stennis'

committee had quickly approved the

nomination.

James Doyle wrote Stennis had rigged in his favor,

in his

many

in this.

He would

not deliberately rig

Nixon, but he would be understanding and was

likely to take Buzhardt's a

that

committee hearing by stacking the witnesses

and he saw no harm

this [tapes] case for

with

a

memoir

word on anv doubts.

.

.

wcll-dcscrved reputation for righteousness.

.

Stennis was a

Nobody

in the

man Sen-

The Saturday Night Massacre ate,

and few

in

his choice. Yet

been shot

in a

return to his

Washington public

life

would

find

it

345

practical to

he was seventy-two years old, and not well.

.

.

.

oppose

He had

mugging on January 30, had been near death, and did not desk until September 5. He would rely on Buzhardt to

handle the tedious and exhausting job of transcribing and was unlikely to

demand

that tapes be played over

and over

until

he was sure of their

contents.

Moreover,

as critics

would shortly point out, Stennis was

partially

deaf and therefore physically unsuited to the task of listening carefully

which had been recorded in Nixon's EOB office, where a less sophisticated set of microphones produced sound quality that was noticeably muddier than recordings done of conversations in

to the tapes, four of

the Oval Office.

The

Nixon

proposition was personally put to Stennis by

—on Sunday, October

confrontation in this meeting

14, in a

—no

ten-minute

"He felt he could handle the job," Nixon wrote in RN, and Stennis agreed to verify the accuracy of some tape summaries. Richardson was called to the White House on Monday and told by Haig and Buzhardt that the president would not go to the Supreme

chat at the White House.

Court. Instead he would prepare his

own

transcripts,

them, and then exercise his executive authority and

fire

authenticate

Cox

outright,

thus mooting the case and ending the legal dispute over the tapes.

A

contemporary magazine article by Yale Law School Professor Alexander Bikel contended that Cox's actions amounted to the president suing himself, and thus Cox's suit had no legal standing and the president could fire him at any time. That "Bikel option" was offered Richardson as the rationale for firing Cox. But Elliot Richardson warned Haig and Buzhardt of what he had promised the Senate, and that if pressured to fire Cox, he would probably have to resign. In this meeting, Buzhardt and Haig did not tell Richardson that the president wasn't going to "authenticate" the tapes himself or that

Stennis would do a half

it.

All they did during the course of a tense

two and

hours was push for the firing of Cox. Only after Richardson call to say that he had a

returned to Justice around noon did Haig

compromise he was willing to run by the president if it was okay with Richardson. Haig would try to persuade Nixon to let Stennis review the tapes, and if Nixon agreed, maybe they wouldn't have to fire Cox after all.

Since the Stennis business had already been proposed and accepted by the president and the senator over the weekend, Haig's proposal,

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

346

—

James Dovle writes, "raises the possibility considered a strong one by those who watched this process during the fateful week that Alexander Haig deliberately misled Richardson, threatening the cataclysm, then seeming to back away to a far more moderate position as an 'accommodation' with Richardson." Haig's stratagem worked, for Richardson leapt at a compromise that would allow both Cox and himself to continue in office. Once Haig learned that Richardson would bite at the bait, he closed the trap. There was a catch, he advised the attorney general in another call. The president had reluctantly agreed to allow Stennis to review the tapes, but in order for Cox to keep his job, the Special Prosecutor must promise not to seek any further tapes and documents from the White House beyond the recordings that Stennis would verify. If Cox refused to go along, Haig added, Richardson must agree to fire him. Richardson couldn't say yes to that without some thought, and told Haig he'd get back to him. It was around two in the afternoon. Buzhardt and Haig drove to Capitol Hill to see Stennis, who told them that listening to all the tapes wasn't possible. Buzhardt assured Stennis that he would lift some of that burden, and, given that assurance, the senator now formally consented to the compromise. Nixon had not given Stennis all the details and Haig and Buzhardt let the senator believe he was going to authenticate tapes for the Ervin committee. Neither Haig nor Buzhardt told him the dispute involved the Special Prosecutor and that the transcripts would go to Sirica. Stennis, a former judge, later claimed he wouldn't have agreed if he'd known the transcripts were for the federal court. Attorney General Richardson, after conferring with his aides, told Haig in a 3:20 p.m. phone call that Stennis was acceptable, but that it was a mistake to try and prevent Cox from getting future tapes and that he could not agree to fire him if Cox asked for more tapes. Haig decided at that point not to press that demand, and told Richardson to come over and work out the details. Richardson did so, and tried to defuse the situation by focusing only on Stennis and putting aside the other issues. At that 4:00 p.m. meeting, Richardson later testified to the Senate, he made it clear to Haig that he would resign rather than fire Cox; he told Haig "there was no need to provoke that confrontation," and that there should be no linkage between what Richardson considered a reasonable compromise, the Stennis proposal, and Cox's right

—

to ask for materials in the future.

The only

thing Nixon heard from Haig that afternoon, he later

felt that the plan was good and reasonable confident there would be no problem and that was Richardson that

wrote, was that "Richardson .

.

.

The Saturday Night Massacre Cox

.

.

.

would agree

to the [Stennis]

distorted Richardson's position:

The

ported "Richardson's assurance that

347

compromise." But Haig had

president wrote that Haig reif

Cox

refused to accept the

Stennis compromise, Richardson would support

me

in the controversy

that was bound to ensue." And, Nixon added, "Richardson's resignation was something we wanted to avoid at all costs." Richardson, of course, had not told Haig that he would support the president in any such controversy. At six, Richardson met with Cox, who was skeptical about the Stennis idea. Richardson took the night to put it in written form, and produced a document that went to Buzhardt on Wednesday afternoon, October 17. Its most important phrase referred not to the tapes that Stennis would authenticate, but to the future. Any request by the Special Prosecutor "covering other tapes," the document said, "would be the subject of subsequent negotiation" between the White House

and Cox. Buzhardt objected to the entire section that dealt with future requests on the grounds that it was irrelevant to the nine tapes subpoenaed by the grand jury. Richardson wasn't looking for a fight, and was looking for a way to narrow the issues and deal with them one at a time, so he agreed. By consenting to the removal from Richardson's proposal of any acknowledgment that the issue of further tapes and documents had been postponed, Richardson played into Haig's and Buzhardt's hands.

Concurrently that afternoon, Judge Sirica ruled that the Senate Watergate committee did not have legal standing to subpoena the tapes.

That meant the lone battle for the tapes was now the confrontation between Cox and the White House. Next day. Cox responded to the Richardson proposal. He didn't want an unnecessary confrontation with the president, but, he wrote, there were substantive problems. He rejected the idea of having Stennis or anyone else verify the president's transcripts, because "The public cannot be fairly asked to confide so difficult and responsible a task to any one man operating in secrecy, consulting only with the White House." Moreover, the proposal's "narrow scope" was a grave defect; unlike a court decision,

it

did not serve the function of "establishing

the Special Prosecutor's entitlement to other evidence."

mined

to preserve his right to ask for

more evidence

Cox was

deter-

—

what

later

just

Buzhardt and Haig wanted to quash. In later testimony Cox recounted that he had asked Richardson why the White House was pressing so hard to make a Friday deadline. The negotiations were "far too important and far too serious for us to do it overnight." Surely if both parties asked for an extension the court

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

348

would grant one, so that the president would have more time to file an appeal to the Supreme Court. Richardson responded that the White House was determined to settle the matter right then and there. Richardson took Cox's written answer back to the White House at six on Thursday evening and took it up with Haig, Garment, Buzhardt, and Charles Alan Wright. All five men considered the response an outright rejection of the Stennis plan. According to Woodward and Bernstein in The Final Days, Haig said that if Cox refused to go along with the Stennis plan, he should be fired. Buzhardt, Garment, Wright, and Haig "were confident that the President could persuade the public of the reasonableness of such an action," Woodward and Bernstein wrote.

Richardson wasn't so confident. He saw large problems looming if to be fired, and objected to the suggestion that he and Henry Petersen could take over the investigation of Watergate once Cox was gone. Since Wright had been the most vocal proponent of the Stennis plan during this meeting, Richardson told him to try personally to sell it to Cox. Later that evening, Wright and Cox had a tense conversation. According to Cox's book, Wright presented him with a four-point

Cox were

ultimatum.

One

of the points was that

Cox must

agree not to subpoena

any additional tapes or documents from the president. Wright's four points. Cox later declared, were intended for no other purpose than to "elicit rejection." According to Wright, there was no ultimatum and no demand that Cox give up the right to ask for other materials. While Wright and Cox were maneuvering over the telephone, a grim Elliot Richardson was at home, writing out on a yellow legal pad a "Summary of Reasons Why I Must Resign." He wrote that while Cox had turned down a reasonable proposal, it could not be regarded as grounds for his dismissal, because the prosecutor was being asked to accept less than he had won from two courts. There was an absolute need for an independent prosecutor, but he himself would not have the requisite independence vis-a-vis "Buzhardt et a!.'" Richardson wrote that he was fundamentally loyal to the president and was by temperament a team player. He didn't understand the need for this confrontation, since, in his view, more cooperation with Cox could have reduced the problems. So, he summarized, because he had appointed Cox on the understanding that he would remove him only for "extraordinary improprieties," and since, Richardson wrote. Cox was not guilty of any wrongdoing, he could not remain in office if Cox was fired. Next morning, Richardson shared his yellow-pad notes with his aides, who agreed with his stance, and gave the notes to his secretary to type up. He called Haig for a progress report on the Cox-Wright

The Saturday Night Massacre

349

negotiations, and Haig said they were continuing. Should things break down, Richardson responded, he wanted to see the president. There could not have been a clearer signal to Haig that the attorney general was set to resign. The letter Wright delivered to Cox that morning supported Cox's view of their previous night's tense conversation; it said the White House "could not accede ... in any form" to Cox's demand that some method be devised for dealing with additional requests for evidence. Reading it, Cox immediately wrote back to Wright that he had prom-

pursue

ised the Senate to

all

legal

avenues to secure whatever evidence

was required to do his job; that meant he could never accept an agreement that barred him from seeking further tapes and documents. "I cannot break my promise now," Cox concluded. Haig must have realized when he read this letter that Cox was as good as gone, but he still tried to keep Richardson on board so long as it would not require retaining Cox. Since Richardson had agreed to the Stennis plan, Haig tried to see if he had a little wiggle room in which to get rid of

Cox while

He summoned RichardCox had rejected Wright's

retaining Richardson.

son to the White House by telling him that

and that the president was now ready to meet with Richardson. attorney general prepared to hand in his resignation, but when he arrived at the White House he was not ushered into the Oval Office. Rather, he was met by Haig, who suggested a completely new approach: They'd sidestep Cox and proceed with the Stennis plan, presenting it directly to Sirica and to the Ervin committee. The committee would want to agree because it had already lost its own court battle and was in no position to refuse an offer that gave it at least "verified" transcripts. If Elliot would only agree to this, Haig said, he'd try to convince the president not to fire Cox. Richardson clung to this ray of hope only until he had read Cox's

offer

The

letter to

Wright.

recognized that

—

saddened and confused him saddened, because he would not be easy to convince Cox to go along with

It it

the Stennis plan; confused, because he didn't understand

why

the

matter of future tape and document requests was even being discussed.

Hadn't they taken that out of the picture earlier in the week? Richardit back into the picture in an something that would hamper him, or

son was not told that Wright had put

attempt to force

Cox

to agree to

to resign.

Despite his confusion, Richardson continued his discussions with Buzhardt, Garment, and Wright while Haig supposedly went to try to convince the president not to

fire

Cox.

The

attorney general suggested

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

350

that Wright send

Cox

yet another letter stating that the future access

provision wasn't part of the Stennis proposal deal.

A

missive from Wright did arrive at Cox's office a few hours later,

but, as Richardson later testified,

was going to be written." In issues it

fact,

it

was "not

in the

form

I

thought

it

Wright's letter did not separate the

and suggest they'd deal with the troublesome one

harshly stated an inflexible position:

"The

later; rather,

differences between us

remain so great that no purpose would be served by further discussion."

Meanwhile, Haig was tricking Nixon. Rather than inform the if Cox was barred from later being able to seek additional tapes or documents, Haig told Nixon that Richardson supported the prohibition against Cox getting free access to further material. He also manipulated Nixon into the belief that Richardson would stand by the White House in a showdown with Cox. In other words, Haig led Nixon to believe that the tapes request could be limited to just this first batch, that the issue of the tapes could then be disposed of entirely by firing Cox, all without Nixon's attorney president that Richardson would quit

general resigning.

Haig put responsibility for "Haig told me that Richardson had suggested as an alternative to firing Cox, putting what he called 'parameters' around him," Nixon later wrote. Those parameters "could include an instruction that he was forbidden to sue for any further presidential documents." What was the purpose of all this chicanery? If Haig had informed the president that Richardson would quit if Cox was barred from later being able to seek additional tapes or documents, Haig would have run

To induce the president

to believe this,

the proposal on Richardson.

the risk of Nixon's leaving

Cox

in place, rather

than facing the political

consequences of Richardson's resignation. With Cox in place, the Special Prosecutor would have been free to pursue the leads that pointed to Haig's role in the NSC wiretapping and, more importantly,

Moorer- Radford. Here was Nixon, once again about to enter on a disastrous course of action on the basis of an aide telling him that the attorney general of the United States had recommended that very course. And once again, it wasn't true. Of course, citing the name of Elliot Richardson did not to

have the same power with Nixon as the citing of John Mitchell, but Haig, no

less

than Dean, understood

how

to

maneuver Richard Nixon

into action.

Haig then went to work on selling the Stennis plan to Richardson, misleading Richardson into believing that the Stennis proposal would

The Saturday Night Massacre

351

not automatically be linked to any limitation on future access to tapes

and documents. A key element in keeping Richardson at bay was to bring Ervin and Baker on board by means of the Stennis proposal. The two senators were approached with the idea; each was out of town when reached, and flew back to confer with the president, Haig, and Wright in the Oval Office at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, October 19. Ervin had not been told that Cox had essentially rejected the Stennis proposal, and said later that in the meeting, when he tried to inquire about Cox's position, the subject had been changed. Ervin also asserted that in the meeting he was promised verbatim transcripts, not the third-person summaries that the White House later said would be issued. In what was becoming a recognizable tactic of wrapping the flag around certain notions in order to conceal them, Haig told the senators that it was important to agree to this compromise and relieve the president of the matter of the tapes so that he could have a "strong hand" in dealing with the crisis in the Middle East. Ervin and Baker agreed to recommend the Stennis plan to the full Watergate committee. Their agreement in hand, Haig revealed the real White House position to Richardson.

He

telephoned the attorney general to read

him a letter from the president that was already on its way. In it, Nixon mentioned that Baker and Ervin had consented to the Stennis compromise as a prelude to telling the attorney general that Nixon was taking actions "to bring to an end the controversy over the so-called

Watergate tapes." Nixon would allow "a limited breach of Presidential

compromise. However, "as part of these I am instructing you to direct Special Prosecutor Archibald that he is to make no further attempts by judicial process to

confidentiality" in the Stennis actions,

Cox

.

.

.

obtain tapes, notes, or

memoranda

of Presidential conversations.

regret the necessity of intruding, to this very limited extent,

I

on the

I promised you with regard to Watergate when I announced your appointment." Richardson was stunned and angry, because this was a direct order and he had thought that everything was still under discussion. He said testily, "Al, given the history of our relationship on this, I would have thought that you would have consulted me prior to sending any letter." Haig said that he'd twice tried to convince the president of Richardson's objections, but that the president wouldn't budge, and that the letter was all the president's doing. According to Nixon's memoir, Haig walked into the Oval Office and told the president that Richardson had

independence that

made

a "tepid"

complaint about some of the terms of the deal, but also

"it's no big problem." Haig had perfected a double switch reminiscent of the

assured Nixon,

lies

of John

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

352

Dean: He had used the name of Richardson to sell his own bad idea to Nixon, and then used the name of Nixon to sell it back to Richardson.

The

real story of the Saturday Night Massacre is not yet through, but mention must be made of the version of the event painted in The Final Days, the book that so clearly reflects the viewpoints of Buzhardt and

Haig. In that version, an embattled Haig is portrayed as merely the messenger to an unyielding Nixon. There is a crucial scene that purports to take place at the White House while on October 18 Elliot Richardson is at home pouring his conscience onto a yellow legal pad. Buzhardt and Haig were conferring with Nixon, "late that night." They were sure that Cox would resign rather than accept the compromise, and that Richardson would accept the compromise, but "Nixon again bore down on the question of access to the other tapes. The line had to be clearly drawn. The matter had to be settled. Now." "Buzhardt suggested that the White House remain silent on the issue," and when Buzhardt continued to press, Nixon "blew up." He wanted the access to the tapes issue settled forever, and Buzhardt was

chagrined because "by asserting that the special prosecutor could not

subpoena additional evidence, they were playing into Cox's hands, instead of his resignation. laying credible grounds for his defiance And they were probably throwing Richardson into Cox's arms." No such meeting ever took place, according to the official presidential log of October 18, 1973. Nixon spoke briefly by phone with Haig

—

three times that evening, the last conversation at 8:00 p.m., but did not

meet with him. Moreover, the presidential logs do not show Nixon meeting with Buzhardt at all during that entire day or evening. The meeting was probably fabricated to cover Haig's and Buzhardt's roles in pushing Cox and Richardson toward the ultimate confrontation with the White House. 1 his meeting was even used in the Woodward and Bernstein book as a handy way to explain to Richardson on the following morning why the prohibition against future tapes had again crept into the proposed agreement with Cox: "Buzhardt said [to Richardson] that it had been added Thursday night at the direction of the President. They [Haig and Buzhardt] had no choice." Having received the president's the phone.

The

letter,

attorney general

Richardson read

made

it

it

clear to his

to

Cox

over

former law

professor that he was not personally issuing the instructions covered in

him of the contents. Cox, Richardson, and the White House all got ready

the letter, merely informing

to issue

i '

— The Saturday Night Massacre

353

statements. Richardson's was going to say that he endorsed the Stennis

plan but disclaimed any responsibility for the prohibition on future access to tapes and documents.

—

who had no reason to want

Richardson as opposed to Cox out of office, then engineered one last attempt to see if Richardson would stay without Cox. Haig apparently gambled that if Nixon announced the Stennis compromise first, and said that it had Baker's and Ervin's endorsement, then Richardson's desire to keep his job Haig,

might lead him to stay on board. So at 8:15 p.m. on Friday night, reporters were handed a statement issued over the president's name. Because the prolonged crisis of the tapes could tempt foreign adversaries to take advantage of the political turmoil in the United States, the statement said, the president had decided to take action "to bring the issue of Watergate tapes to an end." It went on to say that Cox had rejected a reasonable compromise, that the Stennis proposal had the endorsement of Baker and Ervin, and that "there would be no further attempt" by Cox to obtain more tapes or documents. In a sense the statement worked, because Richardson didn't release his own. One more attempt to stiff-arm him occurred at 8:30 p.m., when White House counselor Bryce Harlow called Richardson, saying that at Haig's instruction he had been informing all cabinet members of the Stennis compromise. Richardson complained to Harlow that Haig had treated him shabbily. Harlow didn't tell Richardson that the president had issued a statement, but Richardson found out from Cox when they spoke at around 9:00 p.m. It was then that Richardson decided to scrap his own statement, evidently on the grounds that since the president hadn't mentioned in his statement any orders given to Richardson, there was no need for it. An hour later, at home, Richardson received a call from Haig, who said he'd been told that Richardson felt he'd been shabbily treated. Richardson responded, "Wfell, I'm home now. I've had a drink. Things look a little better and we'll see where we go from here." That was quite a reasonable thing to say under the circumstances, but Haig

would

later

use

it

against Richardson.

In the morning, Richardson job.

He

sent a letter to

Cox

Nixon

still

hoped

to find a

way

to keep his

stating that while he'd consented to try

compromise, he had not agreed at any time to accept a prohibition on Cox's access to additional materials. "Any future situation," Richardson wrote, should be "approached on the basis of the precedent established" by the Stennis

his best to get

to adopt the Stennis

plan.

Cox's

own

press statement was

now

ready, and he delivered

it

at a

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

354

news conference held in the National Press Club at one on Saturday afternoon, followed by a long question and answer session with reporters. He said he would not follow the president's order. He maintained that he was not trying to be defiant and that he was "certainly not out he added, "it is my an officer of the court, and as the representative of the grand jury, to bring to the court's attention what seems to me to be noncompliance with the court's order."

to get the President of the United States," but,

duty

as

The

special prosecutor,

as

conference was televised, and

at 2:07 p.m.,

when

it

was over,

Len Garment telephoned Richardson from Haig's office. They'd been watching the news conference, and Garment explained that the presicrisis in the Middle and that Kissinger was in Moscow and ought not to be forced into delicate discussions with the Soviets just as the political situation was exploding back home. Would Richardson agree to first fire Cox and then to resign if he felt he had to do so? No, Richardson told Garment. He would not fire Cox. Haig's game was up. Richardson would not stay on board as Haig had assured the president that he would, an assurance Haig knew to be false. Haig called Richardson himself at 2:20. The conversation was brief. Cox was in defiance of a presidential order and must be dis-

dent was deeply involved in trying to defuse the East,

—

missed. "Well,

come

I

can't

do

that," Richardson responded. "I guess

I

had better

over and resign." At 4:30 p.m., Richardson was escorted into the

Oval Office and found an angry Nixon, accompanied by Haig. Nixon implored Richardson to hold his own resignation until the Middle East crisis had passed, but Richardson told him he felt he had no choice but to resign now. According to Nixon's memoirs, at this moment Richardson thanked the president "for being such a good friend and for having honored him with so many high appointments," including the cabinet secretaryships of Health, Education and Welfare, Defense, and Justice. Richardson and Nixon parted cordially. "The deed is done," Richardson told his aides when he returned to the Justice Department. Moments later, a call came from Haig to William Ruckelshaus, Richardson's first deputy, and Haig used the same reference to the Middle East crisis and the same suggestion that Ruckelshaus fire Cox and then wait a week before resigning, if he felt resignation was necessary. Ruckelshaus told Haig that if things were that bad, why didn't the White House wait a week to get rid of Cox. "Your commander-in-chief has given you an order," Haig snapped. "You have no alternative."

The Saturday Night Massacre

355

Ruckelshaus refused, and handed the phone to Robert Bork, the soHcitor general just

who by

become the

the abdications of the two

men

above him had

acting attorney general. Haig said he was sending a

limousine to bring Bork to the White House.

When

it

arrived at Justice, the

Garment and Buzhardt, as well to the White House and went in

government limousine contained Bork rode the few blocks

as a driver.

When

to see Haig.

the general started

now-standard speech about the international crisis, Bork interrupted and said, "You need not go on. I have made up my mind to carry out the directive." After a brief meeting with Nixon, Bork signed a letter to Cox announcing his dismissal. Later, Bork would say he did to give his

this

because he believed the president had a right to discharge any

executive branch employee

if

departures" by other Justice

ment

he wanted to do officials that

so, and to prevent "mass would have left the depart-

and badly crippled." At 8:22 P.M. Ron Ziegler appeared in the White House press room to make the announcement of what would shortly be dubbed the Saturday Night Massacre: He said that Cox had been fired, Richardson and Ruckelshaus had resigned, and that the office of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force had been abolished. The investigation of Watergate, Ziegler said, would revert back to the Justice Department. As Ziegler was reading the announcement, Haig ordered the FBI to seal the downtown Washington offices of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force as well as the Justice Department offices of Richardson and Ruckelshaus. By 9:05 p.m., the first agents were in place to guard the doors and prevent anything from being removed from these "in a chaotic condition

offices.

Members

of Cox's staff converged on their offices late Saturday

night to learn that they were not even allowed to remove personal

When James Doyle tried to leave with pictures of his family and other items that had hung on his wall, he was detained by the lead agent, with whom he had become friendly because the agent was the

belongings.

liaison

between the FBI and Cox's

office.

Doyle was stopped near copy of

the door with a pile of photos in his arms; atop the pile was a

Doyle told take it home."

the Declaration of Independence.

stamp

it

'VOID' and

As news of the television

let

firing

me

his friend the agent, "Just

and resignations spread through print and tens of thousands of letters,

reports over the weekend,

phone calls expressing outrage at the president's actions poured into the White House and into offices on Capitol Hill. Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress condemned Nixon's handling

telegrams, and

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

356

of the entire matter, and on Tuesday, October 23, more than twenty bills

calling for

impeachment

inquiries into Nixon's conduct

were

introduced into the House of Representatives. Shortly, the House

approved a $1 million allocation to pursue the matter of impeachment. In one single maneuver, Watergate had been escalated from a political crisis to a matter in which the president was perceived as actively and continually attempting to subvert the Constitution, to the detriment of the American people. Many of those who had been willing to give Nixon some slack on Watergate, who had seen him as a president

mess because of bad advice, now judged him and unfit to rule. Nixon was shocked. In his memoir, he wrote that he "had been prepared for a major and adverse reaction," but was surprised by the "ferocious intensity" of the public condemnation. Privately, he railed what he saw as the perfidy of Elliot Richardagainst the wrong target son. The public quickly lionized the former attorney general for having refused to dishonor his commitment to Congress, which incensed both Nixon and the man who had actually engineered the disaster, Alexander Haig. The general would shortly leak stories to the press that Richardson was a drunkard, a man who had deserted while under fire, a spineless man who had misled Nixon into a debacle. On Tuesday the twenty-third, as the twenty bills of inquiry about impeachment were being introduced into the House, Nixon met with Haig, Buzhardt, and Garment. At two that afternoon Wright was scheduled to appear in Sirica's courtroom and make arguments for the Stennis proposal. Could they still go ahead with that plan now that the country seemed in virtual revolt against the White House? Nixon and his advisers decided they had no choice but to relent. Nixon did much more than relent he made a virtual capitulation. That afternoon Wright informed a startled Sirica and a hushed courtroom that the president would comply after all. The tapes would be delivered to Sirica in camera. "This president does not defy the law," Wright declared. Had Nixon complied earlier, he might have been praised as a president who upheld the law even when it wasn't working in his favor, a cooperative president who had fearlessly allowed a member of his

submerged

in a political

as inept, disdainful of the public,

—

—

own

executive branch, the Special Prosecutor, to sue

him

in court.

The

matter of the request for the tapes might have burnished Nixon's image, not tarnished

by Haig had

it,

at this stage

of the drama

obviated that possibility.

He had

— but manipulations

fed the president

wrong

information, especially regarding the consequences of potential courses

of action, so that even

if

the final decision can be argued to have been

The Saturday Night Massacre

357

Nixon's alone, it can equally be argued that he did not have all the facts and possible ensuing scenarios properly before him when he made it. Did Haig, who after all was a military man and not a seasoned political advisor, simply not understand in his haste to be rid of Cox the political consequences of the Saturday Night Massacre? Was Haig's desire to be rid of Cox so great that he did not care? Or, is it possible that Haig knew exactly what he was doing? Nixon consoled himself, as he later wrote, with the thought that "at least these tapes might finally prove that Dean had lied in his testimony against me." Three days later he made another concession. Even though the press statement of Saturday night had said the Special Prosecutor's office would be abolished, public sentiment had now made it imperative to eat those words, too, and find another man for the job. In a new statement, Nixon said that Acting Attorney General Bork would appoint a new prosecutor, who would have "independence" and would enjoy "total cooperation from the executive branch" because "it is time for those who are guilty to be prosecuted, and for those who are innocent to be cleared." Bork would make the appointment, but Haig would find and instruct the man. Working from a list of names prepared by his friend Morris Liebman, a well-connected Chicago lawyer whom he knew from his years in the Johnson Administration, Haig quickly focused on a Houston attorney who seemed to embody the quaHties Haig wanted the new prosecutor to have. Leon Jaworski was a nominal Democrat who had participated in some matters that smacked of liberalism but who was solidly conservative on national security issues. After the war, Jaworski had worked with the government on war crimes trials, for which he had obtained a high security clearance that was never rescinded. Jaworski had successfully defended Vice President Lyndon Johnson in 1960 against a legal challenge that Johnson had been improperly on the Texas ballot as both a candidate for the Senate and for the vice presidency. In 1962 he'd been appointed by Attorney General Robert Kennedy to prosecute Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, who had blocked black student James Meredith from admission to the University of Mississippi. Later, when Johnson became president, he had appointed Jaworski to several federal commissions. In 1973 Jaworski was a senior partner in a huge Houston law firm and was a recent past president of the American Bar Association. Cox had been a legal scholar; Jaworski was a top-flight trial lawyer, a man accustomed to making practical decisions. When he had prosecuted Ross Barnett he had received hate mail and abuse from some of his

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

358

associates,

and had endured both because, he

the assignment "a

call to

later said,

he considered

duty."

duty when he and allowed that he'd already turned down the job when sounded out by an assistant to Richardson the previous May. There are two versions of what happened between Haig and Jaworski, one expressed by Jaworski himself in his memoir, The Right and the Power, and a second, which can be considered Haig's version, from The Final Days. Jaworski recalled that in the conversation Haig We'll find a way to get had said, "we can give you independence.

Haig used the same appeal

to Jaworski's sense of

telephoned the lawyer on October 30. Jaworski

.

you what you want." Upon hearing felt I

this,

.

initially said no,

.

Jaworski commented, "I had

the urgency in his voice at the beginning of our conversation.

sensed what might be desperation." So Jaworski agreed to

Now fly

to

Washington to see Haig, but made no promises. Haig sent an Air Force plane and brought him to the capital the next day. They met in Haig's office, and the general turned on the charm; almost as an afterthought, Jaworski remembered, Haig informed him that he was high on the list for appointment to the Supreme Court. Jaworski punctured that balloon by saying such a position had been discussed with him during the Johnson administration, and he hadn't been interested in it then and wasn't now. " i'm putting the patriotic monkey on your back,' " Jaworski remembered Haig as saying. " 'The situation in this country is almost revolutionary. Things are about to come apart. The only hope of stabilizing the situation is for the President to be able to announce that " someone in whom the country has confidence has agreed to serve.' The Woodward and Bernstein version of the event is pretty much the same, except for one key sentence in which the authors, too, tried to convey what Haig had said to Jaworski: "Only Jaworski had the personal and professional stature; he was tough, independent-minded and not politically ambitious; he knew and understood the presidency, and he understood what national security and state secrets were." In other words, Haig wanted to have a man who would answer properly to an appeal not to look into certain matters too deeply for instance, the Plumbers and the still secret Moorer- Radford affair. As a man who had had high security clearances, Jaworski understood what

—

they meant,

why

they were employed, and could be expected to be

sympathetic to appeals based on national security.

The Woodward and

Bernstein reconstruction of this concern of

Haig's is echoed in the words Nixon later wrote about the Jaworski appointment in his own memoir: Haig had assured Nixon that Jaworski

The Saturday Night Massacre "would see to its

it

359

that the staff [of the Special Prosecutor's office] limited

activity to relevant

and proper areas."

After promising Jaworski that he could not be dismissed without a

supporting consensus of House and Senate leaders from both parties, including the ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary

committees, and telling him that he would be allowed to sue the president in court, and receiving assurance from Jaworski that under those circumstances he would seriously consider the job, Haig went in to

tell

the president.

A

few moments

later he came back out, looking, as Jaworski later salesman on the verge of 'closing a deal.' " Haig, accompanied by Bork and Attorney General Designate William B. Saxbe, along with Buzhardt, Garment, Laird, and Harlow, urged

wrote,

"like

a

Jaworski to accept.

When

Jaworski accepted, and the announcement was

November

made

the

and what Woodward and Bernstein later described as "exultant." Now he had a Special Prosecutor who would pursue Nixon with no less vigor than Cox had done, and with a great deal more latitude— but he also had a Special Prosecutor who, when approached by a properly couched appeal to patriotism, could be pushed to stay out of areas that were problems for Alexander Haig. following day,

1,

Haig was both

relieved

22

THE EIGHTEEN-ANDA-HALF-MINUTE GAP

AS

Haig called Jaworski on October 30, his associate Fred Buzhardt Sirica's chambers, together with lawyers from the Special Prosecutor's office who were now working directly for Justice. 1 he court meeting was to establish procedures for the transfer of the tapes. Buzhardt informed Sirica and the prosecutors that two of the nine subpoenaed recordings did not exist. One was a four-minute telephone call between Nixon and Mitchell that took place on the evening of June 20, 1972, three days after the break-in. The second was Nixon's fifty-five-minute meeting with John Dean on Sunday night, April 15, 1973, that took place just after Nixon had learned that Dean was talking to federal prosecutors. Sirica scheduled a meeting in open court for the next day to deal with this alarming matter. In testimony from a series of witnesses over the next several days, the inquiry revealed that the taping system had been run in a cavalier fashion. It was not clear when certain tapes had been removed and then returned to storage; a Secret Service agent, asked on the stand how the recordings were logged, produced a brown piece of paper seemingly torn from a paper bag, with markings on it. appeared in Judge

360

The Eighteen-and-a-Half -Minute Gap

361

Each spool of tape lasted for six hours, and sometimes on weekends a out and was not immediately replaced. That, evidently, was what had happened to the April 15 recording; the tape had run out when Nixon and Dean met at 9:17 p.m., and since that happened to have been a Sunday night, there had been no Secret Service agent on duty to change the reel. As for the June 20 call, Buzhardt explained to the court that it had been made from a telephone in the residence quarters of the White House that had not been connected to the reel ran

recording system.

November 2 that he had learned month earlier, on September 29, order to give it to Rose Mary Woods to

Steve Bull disclosed to the court on that the April 15 tape did not exist a

when he had

looked for

transcribe at

Camp

it

in

David. Bull also testified that he had obtained

twenty-six of the tapes for Nixon in early June, and that the president

had reviewed some of them in preparation for Dean's Senate testimony. On June 25, Nixon had even ordered one of the tapes to be flown to him in San Clemente; when no courier flight was available. Bull testified, Buzhardt had listened to it at Haig's request.

These revelations became the headlines of Saturday, November 3, just two days after the announcement of the selection of Jaworski to be the

new It

Special Prosecutor.

was November of 1973.

A year earlier,

in a landslide, carrying every state

Nixon had won

reelection

except Massachusetts as well as

more than 60 percent of the popular vote. Now, polls showed that 60 percent of the American people felt he was not capably handling the presidency. Nixon escaped the headlines by sailing with his friends Abplanalp and Rebozo aboard Rebozo's yacht. Back on land. The New York Times, Time magazine, and even the longtime Nixon loyalist Detroit News ran editorials urging that, as a public service, Nixon resign. "That weekend in Florida," Nixon later wrote, "was a new low point for me personally."

A

strange thing happened that weekend. Buzhardt and

Garment

down to Florida, checked into a hotel near the president's estate, and went to see the boss. Nixon was firming his resolve and looking for ways to rehabilitate his image. The two lawyers had another notion in

flew

mind. to

The Final Days opens with a scene of Buzhardt and Garment flying that after six months of losing battles with

Key Biscayne, convinced

the Congress, the courts, and the Special Prosecutor,

Nixon must

and they must advise him to do just that. Woodward and Bernstein write that this trip was one Al Haig did not endorse. There is a factual error in the Woodward and Bernstein account,

resign,

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

362

but beyond that, the issue

is the motivation of Buzhardt and Garment. two lawyers Since May, the had cleared their every move with Haig, and it defies logic that they would have made this trip without his permission or cognizance. In the Woodward-Bernstein version, the lawyers arrived and made their recommendation to a stunned Haig. Fighting his friends tooth and nail, Haig insisted that Nixon couldn't quit because Gerald Ford hadn't yet been confirmed. And Haig

wouldn't even

let

the lawyers see the president in person, because,

Woodward and

according to

reject the suggestion out of

only that the lawyers had

Bernstein, he

"knew

that

Nixon would

hand." Rather, on Sunday, he told Nixon

come

to Florida

and

why

they wanted to see

them. "He reassured the President that the lawyers were not doubting his

innocence

—only

his

chances to survive," and he assured Nixon that

the recommendation belonged to Buzhardt and Garment, that he

and "did not wish his own position to be misunderstood." Then Haig conveyed to the lawyers that Nixon would himself did not concur in not see

them

The

it,

at all.

factual error in this account

not yet listened to any of the tapes.

is

an assertion that Buzhardt had

Two

witnesses, Bull and a Secret

Service agent, had just recently testified in court that at Haig's request

Buzhardt on June 25 had listened to the tape that no courier plane could be found to transport to San Clemente, and in a week, Buzhardt would verify that to the court. But the Woodward-Bernstein account is written in such a way as to insist that Buzhardt didn't hear any of the tapes until a

much

later date.

We

will see later in the chapter the reason

making this appear to be so. Nixon told his press secretary, Ron Ziegler, the low point he was now prepared for the ascent.

for

that having reached It

was going to be

"a

turning point for our approach to dealing with Watergate," he later "

some desperate and strong measure,' I told Ziegler, 'and this time there is no margin for error.' " He planned a televised speech for November 7, precisely one year after he'd been reelected, to launch Operation Candor. He would display not the wounded president but the man who had come back from many previous political defeats and who would once more rise from the ashes. The speech would be followed by ten days of "bridge-building" wrote.

'We

will

take

breakfast meetings and private chats with hundreds of Democrats and

Republicans

in (>ongress,

and

a

swing through the South to trumpet

the message that the president was

country.

still

on the job and fighting

for the

The Eighteen-and-a-Half -Minute Gap

363

This, then, was the setting for one of the more curious episodes in the history of Watergate, the eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap in a taped

conversation.

The gap

has usually been attributed to a mistake on the

part of Nixon's personal secretary Rose deliberate attempt

by

a

Mary Woods,

and/or to a

mechanically clumsy president to erase infor-

mation detrimental to him. But there was

a

more

sinister aspect to the

than has previously been understood, and it involves Haig and Buzhardt and an especially well-timed and dramatic revelation by Deep

affair

Throat.

Back on September 28, anticipating that the appellate court would rule that the tapes must be turned over, Nixon had asked Haig to arrange for Rose Mary Woods to go to Camp David and transcribe the subpoenaed conversations. Woods was a particularly good choice for this

knew intimately the president's patterns of knew most of the voices on the recordings those of

task because she

speech, and also

—

Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and other counselors. Fiercely loyal to Nixon, she could be counted on to delete the expletives and the scatological characterizations that sometimes dotted their chatter, not to be shocked

by the conversations, and

to keep silent about their contents.

To help

with the technical arrangements, Haig turned to John Bennett, the deputy presidential assistant whom Haig had appointed custodian of the recordings in July.

Woods and Steve Bull drove to Camp David carrying eight tapes and three Sony tape recorders provided by Bennett. In the privacy of rustic Dogwood Cabin, Woods began what she soon discov-

The

next day,

ered would be a long and painstaking weekend of listening and typing.'

She spent twenty-nine hours

just

on the

first

item

listed

on the Special

Prosecutor's subpoena, the June 20, 1972, meeting in the president's

EOB

attended at various times by Nixon, Ehrlichman, and

office

Haldeman,

a

meeting that lasted from 10:30 a.m. to nearly noon. As

pointed out earlier, the quality of the recordings taken from the office

was

The

less satisfactory

president was at

EOB

than those recorded in the Oval Office.

Camp

David that weekend and came

check on his secretary's progress. She told him

in to

was slow going because she had to replay sections of the tape over and over to get an accurate account. Nixon himself put on the headphones and listened for about five minutes. "At first all I could hear was a complete jumble," he recalled in his memoir. "Gradually I could make out a few words, it

thump of a hand on the desk would obliterate whole passages." The Oval Office tapes that he had personally listened to back in June had been much easier to understand. but at times the rattling of a cup or the

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

364

he told Woods, and then arduous task.

left

the cabin after sympathizing about her

Bull had a problem, too, that weekend.

He was

to locate the

conversations called for in Cox's subpoena on the correct six-hour tape reels, and cue them to the proper beginning spots to ready them for Woods. He found the June 20 EOB tape, but could not match up the conversation on the reel with the subpoena list. The list asked for one conversation among the participants, and there had been two on the morning of June 20, one between Nixon and Ehrlichman, and a second immediately thereafter between Nixon and Haldeman. Haig phoned the cabin on the morning of September 29 to see how the work was going, and Bull told him he simply could not find the one long conversation referred to on the subpoena. Haig called Buzhardt, who had remained in Washington, and explained the situation. Buzhardt made a judgment, which Haig then passed to Woods, who typed a note that she gave to Bull. The note later became part of the documentary evidence assembled by the House Judiciary Committee. It reads, in full: "Cox was a little bit confused in his request re the meeting on June 20th. It says Ehrlichman Haldeman meeting what he wants is the segment on June 20 from 10:25 to 11:20 with John Ehrlichman alone. Al Haig." Bull promptly went back to his search, and it was then that he discovered that two of the other subpoenaed conversations were miss-

—

ing;

he passed the information to Haig.

The entire crew returned to the White House on Monday, October Woods had still not finished transcribing the first conversation, but back at her White House office she now had a more convenient mechanical setup. The Secret Service had supplied her with a Uher 1.

5000 recorder that included

a foot pedal for easy operation.

two that afternoon, she rushed into Nixon's EOB office, visibly upset and saying, "I have made a terrible mistake." After completing her work on the Ehrlichman conversation, she told Nixon, she had forwarded the tape to make sure that she had indeed transcribed all of that section. As she was doing so, a call came in on her office phone and she had a conversation of four or five minutes. When she hung up and went back to work on the tape, she was rudely greeted by a shrill buzzing sound. A section of the Haldeman conversation had been wiped out. Later, Woods would reconstruct her mistake for a court hearing. She stated that she must have pushed the "record" button on the machine rather than the "stop" button, while unintentionally resting her foot on the pedal throughout her phone call, an action that kept Just after

The Eighteen-and-a-Half-Minute Gap

365

the machine running and, in effect, recording noise over the previously

recorded conversation.

Nixon calmed Woods and told her the mistake was not of consequence because Buzhardt had told him that the Haldeman portion was not among the subpoenaed tapes. Haig called Buzhardt, who reconfirmed that the Haldeman conversation was not on Cox's list, and Nixon was relieved.

He

should not have rested easy, because Buzhardt was at the very least plain wrong. The counsel had been in continuous touch with Cox since the subpoena had been served, and was in possession of a memo from Cox, dated August 13, that clarified the grand jury subpoena and made it plain that what he expected was Nixon's conversation with "John D. Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman in his Old Executive Office Building [OEOB] office on June 20, 1972 from 10:30 a.m. until approximately 12:45 p.m." Any lingering doubt that both conversations were sought was removed by the additional statement in Cox's memo that "Ehrlichman and then Haldeman went to see the President" that morning (italics added for emphasis). Moreover, Buzhardt had also had his alarm bells rung on the matter of the subpoenaed tapes by the news from Steve Bull that two of the conversations couldn't be located. That he reassured Nixon a second time as to the Haldeman conversation's irrelevance suggests that Buzhardt either didn't look at Cox's explanatory August 13 memo, or that he deliberately ignored it. Error of omission or commission? When Bennett took the stand in Sirica's courtroom on November 6 and described his custodianship of the recordings, his role in providing the tapes to Bull for the trip to Camp David, and so on, the issue was the missing two conversations. The next day, November 7, when Bennett returned to the stand, he told the court that he'd had a talk the previous evening with Rose Mary Woods during which she complained of an unexpected "gap" in one of the tapes she was reviewing for the president.

But

gap in the June 20 conversation that she had was a different tape, which as it would turn out had no gap. Woods hadn't mentioned the gap in the June 20 tape to Bennett, but had told Bennett that she'd been reviewing a tape that hadn't even been subpoenaed, an April 16, 1973, Nixon-Dean meeting. "I think she was puzzled," Bennett testified. "The tape was on the machine. She said, Tve got a gap in this.' " Two days earlier, Bennett told the court, he'd given Woods a new batch of six tapes and had said that the president wanted her to listen to that particular Nixon-Dean conversation and that it was among those reels somewhere. this wasn't the

inadvertently caused.

It

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

366

Rose Mary Woods was called to the stand the next day. She said she had checked the tape and had been mistaken and that there was no gap in that tape. When cross-examined, she made clear that all she had meant by the word "gap" was a missing conversation. With that, the inquiry into this particular gap was settled, and the hearing went on to consider other matters. But by raising the specter of one gap, Bennett had opened up the possibility that the still-secret four-to-five-minute erasure on the June 20 Haldeman tape would shortly be uncovered in the court hearing. That, of course, would be damaging both to Woods and to Nixon. Meanwhile, Bennett's testimony was the occasion for some curious doings

at the Washington Post.

There were two stories on the front page of the Post on November 8, 1973, the day on which Woods testified. Under the headline tapes HAVE PUZZLING "gap" wcrc two articlcs. One, under the subhead nixon AIDE TESTIFIES, was the Straight news account of Bennett's court testimony on the previous day, in which he had quoted Rose Mary Woods about a gap that puzzled her. The second, situated next to the first, was under the subhead parts "inaudible." This second story was written by Bernstein and Woodward, and said that "portions of the seven White House tapes" that Nixon was to turn over to Sirica "are 'inaudible' and thus will probably fail to definitively answer questions about Mr. Nixon's role" in Watergate. Quoting "White House sources" to whom the reporters had talked over the past three days, the story said the tapes were marred by " 'gaps in conversations,' 'unevenness,' 'excessive background noise,' 'periods of silence,' and 'cut-ins and cut-outs during conversation.' " The article stated flatly that "there

is

serious concern

among

the President's aides

problems regarding the tapes will further strain the credibility of the White House." For instance, the reporters quoted a "high-ranking presidential adviser" as saying, "This town is

and advisers that the

latest

"

everybody will say, 'They've doctored the tapes.' This same official had "made clear he rejected that notion." Two paragraphs down, the reporters quoted a source who clearly did anything but reject the doctoring notion: in

such

a state that

Of five

sources

who

confirmed that

difficulties

have risen concerning the

quality of the tapes, one said the problems "are of a suspicious nature"

and "could lead someone

to

conclude that the tapes have been tampered

with." According to this source, conversation on some of the tapes

appears to have been erased obliterated

by the

injection of

—

either

inadvertently or otherwise

background

noise.

—or

Such background noise

The Eighteen-and-a-Half -Minute Gap

367

could be the result of either poorly functioning equipment, erasure or purposeful injection, the same source said.

disputed that there

is

insisted the tapes are

The

four other sources

anything suspicious about the deficiencies and

marred only by technical problems that can be

satisfactorily explained in court.

Who was way

the one source

who

believed that an effort might be under

to destroy evidence? Later, in All the President's

Men, the authors of

it was Deep Throat. Sometime in Woodward initiated a meeting with

the article revealed that of

November

1973,

the

first

week

his source in

"Deep more of the tapes

the underground garage, and received startling information:

Throat's message was short and simple:

One

or

contained deliberate erasures." Deliberate erasures?

At the time of the Post's two articles, as the later admission in All Men makes clear. Woodward was apprised of erasures at least a week ahead of the moment at which an eighteen-and-a-halfminute gap in a tape would be discovered at the White House. Concurrently with the publication of the article. Judge Sirica had Rose Mary Woods on the stand and was investigating a tape gap. And Sirica could be expected to read the paper, especially if an article about problems with the tapes was on the front page under the byline of the reporters who had the best sources about Watergate. The hope may have been that Sirica would go more forcefully into the tape gap with Woods, and uncover the real gap, or perhaps that by focusing on the issue of tape gaps Sirica would be pushed to order that more tapes be turned over to the court, thereby further damaging Nixon. At the point in time when Deep Throat told Woodward about the President's

week of November 1973, five or at the knew or could have known about a possible gap in a tape. They were: Nixon, Woods, Bull, Haig, Buzhardt, and perhaps Bennett. Those who knew about a gap also knew that Woods had not made a deliberate erasure. In their book, Woodward and Bernstein say that following Deep Throat's tip they called four sources in the White House who said there was nothing suspicious about the deficiencies on the tape and then the reporters added some "deliberate erasures," the

most

six

first

people in the White House

—

information that had not been in their earlier stein sources

knew nothing

at all

article:

about any erasure.

The The

four Bernarticle also

had made clear that Bernstein's other four sources disagreed with the one who labeled the erasures "suspicious." Woodward and Bernstein's sources had heard through the grapevine that the tapes were of poor quality.

The book

also confirmed that the source of the

remark about

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

368

the gaps being of "a suspicious nature" and possibly leading "someone to

conclude that the tapes had been tampered with" was the same Deep

Throat.

Their

article

had not

said their source

deliberate, just "suspicious"

—but the

had called the erasures

book, published the following

Deep Throat had said so. Use of the term deliberate knew someone had destroyed evidence, a criminal act. How could Deep Throat have known this? There are three possibilities. Someone could have told him, he could have listened or he could have made the erasures to the tapes and deduced it year, asserted that

implies that the source

—

himself.

Of those who

had the opportutwo would not have talked to Woodward about them under any circumstances Nixon and Woods. Woodward has said that Deep Throat was a single source, not a composite, and Steve Bull was never in a position to know many of the other secrets that Deep Throat passed to Woodward during the course of Watergate. The same can be said of John Bennett, who only had access to some but not all of the information conveyed by Deep Throat to Woodward in that era. Fred Buzhardt died in 1978, and Woodward has said in more recent interviews that Deep Throat is alive and that Woodward will tell all about him if he dies. That leaves Haig. In a tenth anniversary program about the Watergate burglary, on June 17, 1982, "Nightline" moderator Ted Koppel asked Woodward and Bernstein to describe their famous source. Bernstein responded, listened to the tapes (and therefore

nity to alter them),

—

is a person who occupied a sensitive position in the executive branch of the government, who, although he was unwilling to give us primary information about the story, he would confirm or steer us in

"This

we had obtained elsewhere." Woodward added, "Carl is right is describing this person as an indirect source, somebody who would say 'Look in this direction.' He

the right direction on information

would confirm things. He was not the person coming wheelbarrow and dumping the entire story and saying, 'All

Now

print

in

with

a

right now.

" it.'

what Deep Throat did, allegedly in the garage meeting, in the first week of November 1973: He dumped a story on Woodward, who promptly printed it at the precise moment when it could do the most damage to Nixon's credibility. Yet that

We tion

is

asked

among

precisely

Wbodward

in

our interview about the apparent contradic-

his various explanations of

Deep Throat's

role as his source.

Did he only confirm information, as Woodward and Bernstein have stated on "Nightline" and elsewhere, or was he a primary source, as is

The Eighteen-and-a-Half -Minute Gap

369

from the story of early November 1973? Woodward answered, any relationship you may have with somebody, a source or otherwise, it's evolving. The book makes it clear." Reminded that he and Bernstein had said something quite different on "Nightline," Woodward said, "Okay, but ... as you see from the story [of November 8] we said we had five sources, right?" Wrong. Woodward ignored the fact that the article had made clear that while there were five sources, the other four had contradicted Deep Throat. Woodward then added, "Now, I would have to go back to notes and the book and the stories and the sequence and so forth, and I'm not sure I'm saying in there that he was the first source at all. So you're leaping to a conclusion." In several telephone calls we attempted to put these and other questions about Deep Throat, and questions about his and Woodward's Watergate reporting, to Carl Bernstein. He first told us he would not answer any questions until he had spoken with Woodward, and later requested a letter containing some of our questions. A letter was sent, clear

"Just like

.

.

.

but he did not respond. It

may be

that the inconsistencies in

characterization of

Deep Throat

Woodward's and Bernstein's

as a source are

only the result of

Woodward's attempt to hide his source and to lend appropriate literary drama to his book. Despite Woodward's demurrer. Deep Throat may have been a composite of several sources, as some historians and journalists have concluded. Despite Woodward's other demurrer about the source still being alive. Deep Throat may have had more than a touch of Buzhardt in him. The identity of Deep Throat is a phantom that it is

no longer of any importance to chase. It was always a cover story designed to

wrong direction, and has now outlived its usefulness. November of 1973, Chief of Staff Alexander Haig played a key role in feeding damaging information about the White House tapes to his former Navy briefer, Bob Woodward, on the eve of Nixon's Operation lead detectives in the

What

is

apparent

is

that in

Candor, on which the president had pinned such high hopes.

Nixon was

into the sixth of the ten sessions he

had scheduled with

November 14, 1973, when Fred Buzhardt sat down at the White House with Miami trial attorney Samuel Powers. Haig had gotten his name from Morris Liebman (who had also recommended Jaworski) during the weekend he had accompanied the president to Key Biscayne. "I was brought in like a surgeon to do an appendectomy," Powers told us. He came in to represent the White House in the tapes hearing in Sirica's court. On November 14 he was

Congressional leaders on

—

with Buzhardt to review the seven conversations nine subpoenaed minus the two that couldn't be found due to be turned over to sitting

—

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

370

Sirica, and to catalogue those portions for which the White House planned to claim executive privilege.

In The Final Days, 1973, was the

14,

House

tapes.

Woodward and

first

This claim

Bernstein claim that

November

time Buzhardt listened to any of the White is

had first listened and would shortly testify

interesting since Buzhardt

to a presidential tape recording

on June

25,

open court. greater importance is something Buzhardt actually did on November 14. That day, he and Powers began work on the June 20 tape, the first one listed on the subpoena, and the tape in which there was a gap that had so alarmed Rose Mary Woods. Buzhardt had twice assured the president that that gap was of no consequence. Now, he and Powers sat down to listen to the tape with stopwatch in hand. "Fred told me we could expect to find a four-to-five-minute gap on either Ehrlichman or Haldeman," Powers recalls. The Ehrlichman section was clear. The gap approached and started. Five minutes went by, and the gap did not cease, but continued on until nearly eighteenand-a-half-minutes had passed. As if that wasn't enough. Powers now looked at Cox's August 1 3 clarification memo and saw that the gap was squarely in the area that Cox had subpoenaed. He said so to Buzhardt who disagreed. Powers was adamant: They were going to have to produce that tape. He recalls insisting that when one reviewed the subpoena and the clarification memo together, "there was no way you couldn't conclude" that the Haldeman conversation was part of the subpoena. Powers also says that when he had demonstrated that, Buzhardt made no further argument against bringing the tape and its gap to the court. June 20: Haldeman and Nixon speaking together. At that point in time, John Dean knew everything, and Nixon and Haldeman knew very little. It was still three days before Dean would slip to Haldeman the idea that the CIA should be used to block the FBI. If Nixon or someone who wanted to protect him was going to erase any tape, that person would choose the June 23 tape, the one that later became the smoking gun. There was nothing on the June 20 tape that was crucial to the so in

Of

—

president's defense, or that could incriminate

had not been made

him

in the eyes of the public.

The

to protect the president,

but to embarrass

The Final Days portrays Haig as shocked and angry

when Buzhardt

deliberate erasure

him.

him of the big

Ihey go around on the subpoena and the explanatory Cox memo until Haig finally says, "I must share your How the hell could we have been confused on this, judgement. tells

.

Fred?"

.

.

gap.

The Eighteen-and-a-Half -Minute Gap

371

He had first looked into the matter of was covered by the subpoena in September, and in early November Deep Throat had leaked information about possible "suspicious" tampering with the tapes. Buzhardt was not able to find and inform Haig until later in the evening of November 14, Powers recalls. But "the president, as I understood it, was entertaining some senators, some of the leadership of the Senate, in the East Room of the White House, and Haig didn't want to interrupt him." The night passed, and Nixon remained uninformed, as he did during most of the following day, when he made a Surely he was not confused.

whether

televised

this tape

speech to the convention of the National Association of

Realtors.

In The Final Days, Haig's silence

who

described as the act of a

is

has compassion for the president and

who

man

doesn't want to give

him bad news when he's in a crowd. "Haig worried about the effect of news on the Old Man. The constant public exposure throughout the week would be a strain. This news, coming so soon after the disclosure that two of the subpoenaed conversations were not on tape, would be devastating to the president's position. The additional pressure would take its toll." Nixon recounts in his own memoir that the news did, indeed, take a toll on him. "It was a nightmare," Nixon wrote of the moment when Haig and Buzhardt finally informed him of the gap, late in the the

afternoon of the fifteenth.

"How

in hell,

I

asked, could

we

have

made

a

mistake about something as fundamental as whether or not a particular conversation was covered by a subpoena?" Moreover, on the other bad

news, the gap that ran for so long, it

had happened or account

"No one

for the shrill

could explain

how

or

why

buzzing sounds that punctu-

ated the otherwise blank portion."

Despite his rage, Nixon determined to press on with his public

on November 17, in a session before Managing Editors Association convention at Disney World, the president uttered a memorable phrase. "People have a right to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook." In a less well-reported section of that speech, Nixon also

relations offensive. Tvvo days later,

the Associated Press

spoke about the essential need to shield certain matters under the claim of national security.

To

buttress his point that this was not simply a

ploy to keep investigators away from illegal activities, he cited the fact that the shield

was being used "not only

in Ellsberg

but also in another

matter so sensitive that even Senator Ervin and Senator Baker have

decided that they should not delve into

On November

20,

when

it."

asked at the Republican Governors Con-

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

372

"Are we going

by any more bombshells?" any more bombs, I'm not aware of them." He made that reply, Nixon recalled in his memoir, because he still hadn't heard from Buzhardt whether or not the erased conversation could somehow be recovered, and "I knew that if I indicated even the remotest possibility of a new bombshell, I would have to say what it was and I still was not sure of the answer to that myself." The Butterfield revelation that had been withheld from Nixon; the handling of the battle with Cox and the resultant Saturday Night ference,

Nixon

to be blindsided

replied, "If there are

—

Massacre; the foray to Key Biscayne to raise the specter of resignation; the continuing attempt to keep everyone away from Moorer- Radford;

—

Woodward since Haig and White House in early May to save the Buzhardt had come to the president, all these things had happened, and each one was a body blow to Nixon's hold on the presidency. The sheer number of accumulated errors now make moot the question of whether these were deliberate or innocent mistakes. The pattern was there, if anybody had the "deliberate erasures" events and leak to

been able to read

it

On November

at

the time.

21, 1973, the next bombshell, that of the eighteen-

and-a-half-minute gap, exploded in Judge Sirica's courtroom as the counsel to the president approached the judge and the prosecution

lawyers in Sirica's chambers, and began by saying, "Judge,

problem."

we have

a

23

MOORER-RADFORD DISINTERRED

ARCHIBALD

Cox had been fired, in part, for pursuing the probe Bud Krogh, matters that threatened to

of the Plumbers and indicting

expose the Moorer-Radford participants in

On

it.

affair

and the connections of Haig to the

Cox's departure did not end the problem.

was being cajoled by Haig into acceptBud Krogh's lawyers filed a broad discovery motion in federal court. This motion made clear how they planned to pursue Krogh's defense: on the basis that he had been told that his investigations had come under the umbrella of national security. They requested in support of that defense a variety of White House tapes and other materials involving the Plumbers. One specific request took direct aim at Moorer-Radford. Krogh's defense team asked for "certain tape recordings of conversations" between Ehrlichman, Young, and Nixon "in December, 1971, and January through February, 1972, in which the work of the Special Investigations Unit [Plumbers] was discussed, the India-Pakistan leaks were discussed, and/or instructions were given on the necessity for absolute secrecy regarding the activities" of the Plumbers. Backing up that request was another for October

3

1

,

as Jaworski

ing the job as Special Prosecutor,

373

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

374

"all files

of the Special Investigations Unit

.

.

.

presently held in the

White House as Presidential documents." (No wonder that Haig and Buzhardt had adamantly refused to allow Cox to ask for more tapes and papers.) Krogh knew perfectly well that the requested materials included the transcript of the Welander interrogation, the notes of Ehrlichman and Young, as well as Young's overall report on the Moorer-Radford matter. He probably didn't want to bring these to light either, and asked for them only because they would show clearly that his work had been done for national security reasons, and that for those same reasons he had been told by superiors to lie to the grand jury on the matter of knowledge of the Liddy-Hunt California trip. He may even have hoped that the White House would refuse to provide the documents, an act that would allow Krogh's lawyers to move for a dismissal on the grounds that they were denied evidence essential to Krogh's defense. After Jaworski took over on November 5 one of his first acts was to sign the prosecution's reply to Krogh's brief. James Doyle recalled in ,

his

memoir of the

prosecutor's office during Watergate that this reply

had been drafted by Assistant Prosecutor Philip A. Lacovara and who had worked on the matter during Cox's tenure, but that Jaworski endorsed its strong language and signed it. The reply stated: others

In the recent past, national security has

invoked by justify office,

a

officials at

widely disparate

wide range of apparently

become

levels

illegal

a

kind of talisman,

of government service to

No

activities.

not even the highest office in the land, carries with

ignore the law's

command any more

used by government officers to

it

government the right to

than the orders of a superior can be

justify illegal behavior.

This reply brief was front-page news, and Doyle writes that

it

"sent

shudders through White House aides." Here was Jaworski, taking the same position for which Cox had been fired. Haig, who had been "exultant"

ment only Jaworski

when a

why

Jaworski had accepted the Special Prosecutor assign-

week earlier, now realized that he hadn't properly told he had been so insistent on retaining "national security"

as a shield for certain matters.

On November a late ski's

13,

Jaworski was

summoned

to the

White House

for

afternoon meeting with Haig and Buzhardt. According to Jawor-

handwritten notes of the meeting, now

in the National Archives,

demands" were "trouand threatened to expose a sensitive national security case. The notes continue: "Yeoman used as secretary by Haig tremendously

the Special Prosecutor was told that "Krogh's ble,"

.

.

.

Moorer-Radf ord Disinterred and agreements with heads of state

sensitive conversations

memos

375

.

.

.

dictated

." Further, the yeoman had been copy to Chm. Joint C. "recommended by Haig" to travel with Kissinger, whose papers had also been copied and passed to the JCS chairman. Jaworski was told that a January 10, 1972, report had been written and contained logs of the investigation. This was the report that Buzhardt had prepared for Melvin Laird. The notes also reveal that in telling Jaworski about Moorer-Radford, Haig and Buzhardt gave him not only the outline of the case, but also enough information to make Jaworski understand that Haig himself had .

.

.

.

a personal stake in

Upon

.

it.

Doyle wrote in his memoir, downplayed what had happened and told his staff that what Haig had said was "so much bullshit. I didn't pay any attention to it and you don't have to, either." That may or may not have been true. In his memoir, Jaworski wrote that he went to the White House on his own initiative, "to jog Haig's memory about his promises of cooperation and ... to satisfy myself about the 'grave national security matters' the Plumbers had Jaworski's return to his office,

the Special Prosecutor

.

handled.

.

.

.

The

.

national security matters [Haig] described didn't

most of them were very moment the country would not be endan-

appear to be very grave to me.

made

.

public at that

I

concluded that

if

gered." So: Jaworski claimed he didn't take the matters seriously.

At that meeting with Haig, also attended by Buzhardt, the Special Prosecutor discussed the Dr. Fielding break-in, and later wrote that the

two aides agreed

to surrender the material they

had previously

refused to give to Cox. Jaworski later testified that "there was no

from Haig and Buzhardt when I indicated that some indictments could be brought and that I was going to pursue them" in regard to the Dr. Fielding break-in. Subsequently, he filed charges against Ehrlichman and Colson on the matter. Since Haig and Buzhardt so easily gave to Jaworski materials they had vehemently denied to Cox only a short time earlier, it seems likely that during their meeting in the White House a deal was made: Jaworski received Plumbers documents pertinent to the Dr. Fielding matter, but in return probably agreed to stay away from Moorer-Radford. Buttressing this supposition is the fact that among the Plumbers documents eventually turned over to Jaworski's office, none mentioned resistance

the JCS spying probe. In mid-November U.S. District Judge Gerhard Gesell denied Krogh's motion to dismiss his indictment, and in the process also

denied the discovery motion that requested the

December

1971 and

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

376

early 1972 tapes and document. hardt. Krogh's major

bargain.

line of

On November

Daniel Ellsberg's

30,

That was

a relief to

Haig and Buz-

defense gone, he was pushed toward a plea

Krogh plead

civil rights; in

guilty to conspiracy to violate

exchange, Jaworski dropped the perjury

charge.

During Cox's tenure, LaRue, Magruder, and Dean had all pleaded guilty and started serving sentences that were relatively short, measured in months. Krogh was the first official of the former administration to plead guilty in the Jaworski era, and Krogh received an effective sentence of six months. With his guilty plea, the threat to Haig receded significantly.

Moorer-Radford wouldn't stay buried. Back in July, when Ehrlichman and Baker had had their public exchanges about the JCS spying without naming it, many people had been intrigued by what Ehrlichman said and what he had been obviously constrained from saying. Listening at the press tables were two enterprising reporters. Dan Thomasson was a Washington bureau man for the Scripps-Howard chain of newspapers, and Jim Squires was a Washington correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. Though they worked for different news organ-

them to collaborate in their by the exchanges, the two reporters began digging, and tried to learn about the mysterious Plumbers investigation cited by Ehrlichman and his lawyer, John Wilson. On October 10, 1973, the Watergate reporting team Woodward and Bernstein entered the ranks of investigators chasing Moorer-Radford with a story buried on page A27 of the Washington Post that said "a lowlevel assistant to the National Security Council had his phone tapped in an investigation of news leaks in late 1971." An unnamed source suggested that the tap was "in connection with a 1971 probe of the leak of secret documents to syndicated columnist Jack Anderson about U.S. izations,

their separate bosses allowed

reporting. Intrigued

The unidentified "low level assistant" was Yeoman Charles Radford. Woodward had been sitting on the Moorer-Radford story since June. This October 10 story has the earmarks of a trial balloon, or of a who were deliberate leak sent out to see if Thomasson and Squires known to be chasing the military espionage matter could be forced into print with what they had, and before their investigation was policy in the India-Pakistan war."

—

—

complete.

Thomasson and Squires weren't pushed any

faster into print, but

did note as they continued to get closer to the story that Nixon was

beginning to refer in speeches to an investigation that Baker and Ervin

I

Moorer-Radf ord Disinterred

377

had "wisely declined" to make public. Senator Baker, too, kept on the matter, perhaps annoyed that Nixon was now using as part of his own defense the idea that Baker and Ervin had agreed to keep certain matters under wraps. Baker could do little more than hint to the public that the national security issue might be the "missing link" that could explain the entire Watergate story. Behind the scenes, Buzhardt and Haig would tell him nothing. On November 29, Thomasson and Squires hit print with a story that in 1971 the Plumbers had tried to stop a leak of highly sensitive information about the Soviet Union. They had few details, only that it involved the Russians.

Those

in the

know could guess

that

what they

were referring to was an investigation of Jack Anderson for a 1971 column that discussed the capacity of the United States to listen in on conversations in certain Soviet limousines. "Some who know about the matter,"

Thomasson wrote,

would endanger the

"believe disclosure of

highest Russian official circles."

pinned

down

its

details ultimately

of a U.S. intelligence source close to the

life

The two

reporters

now thought

they'd

the 1971 secret investigation that had been guarded so

tenaciously in Ehrlichman's testimony.

They soon discovered that the secret was something larger. A big hint came when Fred Buzhardt asked them to come to the White House in late 1973. Thomasson recently told us that Buzhardt seemed to have assumed that the reporters had learned quite a bit about MoorerRadford. During this meeting, Buzhardt made cryptic statements and tried to learn what the reporters knew. "I think he was trying to play poker with us, and I think sometimes we played a better game than he did. I really believe that he thought we knew at that juncture one hell of a lot more than we did know." Thomasson reports that Buzhardt

made

reference to "babysitting people," a reference the reporters did

it became clear to them that Buzhardt had been referring to the tap placed on Radford's home phone in Washington, and, after he was transferred, on his phone in the Pacific Northwest, the same tap Woodward and Bernstein wrote of in their

not understand at the time. Later

October 10 story.

December

21, 1973,

was

a

snowy day

in

Washington. Leon Jaworski, home to Texas in a few

the Special Prosecutor, was scheduled to fly

hours, but before he did, he was to have a private meeting with Al

Haig.

"The two men had been

cultivating their relationship," James

Doyle

wrote. "Jaworski believed he could use Haig, Haig believed he could use Jaworski. Haig would

tell

Nixon and Buzhardt and others

that

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

378

Jaworski was sympathetic to the President's problems but was a captive

Doyle reports that one member of the Special Prosecutor's staff told Jaworski to his face that he was "too cozy with Al Haig," but that Jaworski had "rejected the criticism." Jaworski and Haig had worked out a way to keep their meetings from the public eye the Special Prosecutor made his way into and out of the White House complex through the Diplomatic Entrance, one that had been established to shield diplomats who did not want their visits to be known. The two men met in an historic setting, the firstfloor Map Room, a parlor to which Franklin Roosevelt had often retired to study battle maps during World War II. The subject of this discussion was the March 21, 1973, tape, that of "the cancer within the presidency." Sirica had recently turned it over to Jaworski's office. The prosecutor and his assistants had listened to it and considered it devastating to the president. That conclusion had been conveyed to Haig, and Haig had summoned Jaworski to hear the White House's of the old

Cox

staff of zealots."

—

position in response.

According to Jaworski's memoir, the conversation was pleasant but adversarial. The White House lawyers, Haig said, had decided that the tape did not show criminal conduct by the president. Hearing this, Jaworski said, "Al, I want to tell you something. I think you should get someone not concerned with the finest criminal lawyer you can find and let him study the tapes." the White House in any way That was the entire message of the conversation. Jaworski was clearly implying that the White House's current analysis was dead wrong, and that a good independent lawyer would tell Haig just that, an opinion that could only hasten Nixon's resignation. As the two men walked to the Diplomatic Entrance, Haig was "silent, thoughtful," Jaworski later wrote. And then the chief of staff "looked up at me and tears were glistening in his fine eyes. I left him that way, and went to

—

my

—

car."

After his trip to Texas for Christmas, Jaworski returned to the

Map

Room

with Haig on December 27, and learned that Haig had been in touch with James St. Clair, a highly regarded Boston trial attorney, whose name he had gotten as he had Jaworski's from Morris Lieb-

—

—

man. Among the particulars that recommended St. Clair was that he had defended the Army at the infamous hearings held by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 195()s; Haig liked defenders of the Army. On January 4, 1974, James St. Clair came aboard. As he did, two other shifts on the White House staff were announced. Buzhardt was appointed sole counsel to the president, and it was announced that he was giving up his other hat, that of counsel to the Department of

Moorer-Radford Disinterred

379

Defense. Moving over from the job of counsel to the president to the position of special assistant to the president

on domestic

affairs

was

Len Garment,

Two

explanations for the shifts were put out by the White House.

Nixon was reported

as

angered

Buzhardt's performance in the matter

at

of the missing and erased tapes, and so had hired St. Clair.

That made

Buzhardt was being elevated to sole counsel to the president, but no one remarked on it. The other explanation was that Buzhardt and Garment had simply become fed up with defending Nixon, and were making way for a more vigorous defense. Neither explanation held much water. The greater likelihood had to do with Moorer- Radford. Reporters were getting closer and closer to the real story, and there was some agitation for congressional hearings on the matter. For instance, at the turn of the year on a televised interview. Senator Baker urged Nixon "to provide some security information which he has been withholding and to more or less take the repercussions it would have domestically and let it be done and over." The real reason Buzhardt moved out of his Defense Department job entirely was so he could concentrate on containing MoorerRadford while at the same time appearing to have no further connection to the Defense Department position he had held in 1971-72, when he had done his best to conceal the affair. In the weeks ahead, there would be some comment that Buzhardt had quite precipitously dropped from little

sense,

if

public view.

Thomasson and Squires the remainder of December and week in January to nail down the Moorer-Radford story. There was no hesitancy on our part "Finally it all came together. It

the

took

first

.

when we found

.

.

the missing pieces,"

Thomasson

says. Before

going to

they wanted a comment from Haig, and sent Aldo Beckman, White House correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, to see the chief of staff. As Thomasson recalls the event, "He goes to Haig and says, 'Thomasson and Squires have this story saying thus and such.' And Haig said, 'Oh, shit, I knew it was going to get out,' and he turned white and said, Til get back to you.' And he came back and said, " 'There's not a word of truth in it.' Around January 7, Bob Woodward called Yeoman Chuck Radford in Oregon and told him that the story of his 1971 ordeal was no longer going to continue to be a secret, that newspapers would shortly be revealing it. Radford was shocked to learn this. "When I realized it was all going to come out in the newspaper, I was sick to my stomach," he recalls. Woodward "asked me questions but I told him it was something I would not discuss." print,

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

380

That same day, Don Stewart was at the Pentagon when Bob Woodward telephoned him and asked, "What do you know about a telephone tap on Charles Edward Radford?" Stewart referred Woodward

an answer, but he started taking Woodward next wanted to know what Stewart knew about "information being leaked from cables on the India-Pakistan War," and about "Radford feeding information from the White House to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and also to them from Kissinger and General Haig." Woodward also asked Stewart if he had been interviewed by the Senate Armed Services and Watergate committees, and "What do you know about Admiral Welander?" to the

Pentagon press

office for

notes because the questions kept coming.

Stewart then referred him again to the Pentagon press office, hung up, and wrote his memo of the conversation for his bosses. Stewart concluded in that memo that Woodward had gotten his information thus far from Capitol Hill, and that "My personal feeling is that Democrats are trying to shoot the Republicans down." Woodward also called Admiral Welander that week. Back in June 1973, the two had had a conversation in which Woodward had tried to learn what Welander might say about Moorer-Radford, and had found out that Welander wouldn't say anything. In January 1974, Welander recalls. Woodward got him on the phone. "He said the story is going to break and I have to write it, and what can you tell me about it?" Welander says he told Woodward very little, and denied any wrongdoing.

While Welander declines to say what he actually told Woodward, he does exhibit a sense of having been betrayed by his former subordinate. "I thought he was a friend," Welander says. The reason for Welander's distress will shortly become clear. At the moment it is necessary to note that before Thomasson and Squires published on January

1 1

,

Woodward had information on Moorer-Radford

that other

reporters did not. But he and Bernstein did not publish until after

Thomasson's and Squires's stories broke. Thomasson's and Squires's stories were each printed on January 1, 1974. 1 homasson's began: "A secret White House investigation of leaks of classified information in late 1971 produced evidence that high Pentagon officials were spying on the office of Henry A. Kissinger." The outline of the espionage was brief, but included mention of Moorer and the JCS as recipients of the information, and included a denial by Moorer, through a spokesman. However, the article said, "at least four sources independently confirmed that the military tried to get from Kissinger's office information that had been denied it." A similar Squires account, published the same day under a banner 1

Moorer-Radford Disinterred

381

headline across the Chicago Tribune's front page, also reported Haig's

Beckman

—

was false and something more. Haig, quoted only as a senior White House official, mentioned the possibility of "lawsuits" and said that any newspaper that printed the story "would have to be responsible for it." Thomasson and Squires did not yet know the names of those who had been passing material to Moorer but the names Welander and Radford came out the next day, January 12, in an article by Woodward

assertion to

that the story

—

and Bernstein.

What

upset Wfelander was immediately apparent:

prominently displayed

his

"Pentagon Got Secret Data of Kissinger's." curious in what

it

said

and did not

"Military liaison aides in the White

Pentagon

in 1971,

Moorer or

The

Post story

picture next to the text of the article,

The

article

itself

was

began by saying flatly that House passed information" to the

say. It

but avoided mention that the material had gone to

to the Joint Chiefs.

the article said, "was sought

The

information from Kissinger's files, by high Pentagon officers who were

uncertain about radically shifting U.S. foreign policy toward Russia,

China, and other countries." Beyond this lead, however, the bulk of the article concerned

Chuck Radford,

the tap on his phone, and the

India-Pakistan leak to Jack Anderson. Radford was characterized as "the central figure in the matter," and the article said that Welander

had been transferred "only because Radford had worked for him." In clue about the sources

Woodward and

stated that the investigation of the leak of

by

J.

a

Bernstein had tapped, the article

Anderson had been "directed

Fred Buzhardt," and that Buzhardt's investigation "never estab-

Welander or Radford did anything wrong." No mention was Ehrlichman or Young probes. The effect of the Woodward and Bernstein article was to knock down what Thomasson and Squires had revealed namely, that lished that

made

in the article of the

—

Moorer and the JCS had been involved. For instance, the Woodward and Bernstein article asserts that four of their sources insisted "that news accounts characterizing this information distribution as spying on or surveillance of Kissinger are wrong," and went on to assert that their sources said, "It was never clear who in the Pentagon set up or benefitted from the unauthorized pipeline of information." The military liaison office had been closed. Woodward and Bernstein quoted some sources as saying, because Kissinger had wanted it closed for some time, and the leak to Jack Anderson "gave him a reason." Finally, Welander's current post, assistant deputy chief of naval operations, was "an important job in the Navy hierarchy that Pentagon officials said

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

382

would not have been given

to

anyone suspected of unauthorized

distribution of classified material."

The Woodward and Bernstein story, heavily favorable to the White House, suggested that the espionage had done no harm, that it was all Radford's fault, and that the purloined material had never been important and was of no interest to the JCS. Moorer was not named as a recipient, although he was quoted through a spokesman as denying any involvement in the matter, Welander was rehabilitated, and no mention was made of investigations by Ehrlichman or Young the investigations that turned up the name of Alexander Haig. Just how far off the mark and slanted the Post story was could be seen from a competing story by Seymour Hersh in that morning's New York Times. Hersh's reporting focused on David Young and the Plumbers' discovery in late 1971 "that a 'ring' of military officers was attempting to relay highly classified information on the China talks and other matters to officials in the Pentagon," and that while Young's investigation had first focused on leaks to Anderson, it "quickly spread into a broad investigation of possible widespread military spying." Both Kissinger and Young, Hersh wrote, "suspected that reports on the White House's negotiations with China, North Vietnam and the Soviet Union were being leaked to Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird and Adm. Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." Hersh's sources all agreed that Kissinger "shared Young's belief that Pentagon officials were eager to obtain by covert methods if necessary details of secret deliberations with nations usually considered America's enemies by military men." Moreover, other sources said that the Young investigation "really did uncover a ring of some sort inside the NSC." Hersh reported that Welander had been reassigned after the investigation, but the Times reporter apparently had not yet learned about

—

—

.

.

—

.

Radford's role.

Hersh cut much closer to the bone than Woodward and Bernstein on the White House's effort to suppress Moorer- Radford, and commented on the meeting at the White House in which Ervin had agreed to keep the Watergate committee away from this matter. He wrote that though within the White House some people had pressed for disclosure in the hope of bolstering the argument that the Plumbers had indeed investigated serious national security matters, "the advocates of disclo-

Fred Buzhardt." There J. unanswered questions, Hersh reported a source as saying; that source added that if there had been misconduct by the military, "then we had the rudiments of the kind of thing that leads to a military sure were overruled by a faction headed by

were

still

takeover."

Moorer-Radf ord Disinterred Woodward Welander

tells

I

remember any contact with but asserts, "As you know and as a

us that he cannot

in the spring of 1973,

matter of record,

383

think Carl and

[Welander] as the Kissinger aide

I

wrote the

who was

first

story identifying

fired, or relieved or trans-

depending on how you look at it." How did he feel writing such about his former commanding officer? "I guess I would cite it as an example of the newspaper's and my independence. He was a former skipper and somebody I knew, but names were being taken and we went ahead and did it." The day following their big Moorer-Radford story, Woodward and Bernstein wrote one more article that mentioned Moorer-Radford, again naming Radford as "the central figure" and quoting a White House source complaining that "someone is trying to make the Pentagon-Kissinger affair look like Seven Days in May. It's nothing of the kind." After that, responsibility for this important story was handed to Michael Getler, the Post's beat reporter at the Pentagon, and to Laurence Stern. "Frankly," Getler tells us, "I don't remember the details, [but] it may have gone from an investigative story to a running story in which the beat reporter takes it over." Did Getler, now the Post's assistant managing editor for foreign news, know of Woodward's past relationships with Welander and Moorer, two key figures in the ferred,

a story

affair?

that's

ber.

honestly don't

"I

why

It's

remember

that.

It's

quite possible,

he [Woodward] bowed out of the story.

I

just don't

maybe remem-

not inconceivable that he told me."

Hersh continued to pursue the story, but made a mistake in an published on January 13. He said that an unidentified government official involved in the spying probe had tried to "blackmail" President Nixon into giving him a more important job by threatening to expose the secret investigation. Moreover, the "White House told the Senate Watergate committee last summer" of the blackmail threat, as part of the conference between Baker, Ervin, and the White House. This was a reference to what we now know but Hersh did not then know to have been Don Stewart's job request to the White House and the Buzhardt-Haig-Richardson attempt to prosecute Stewart. Hersh wrote that Baker had continued to investigate the espionage on his own, and had recently met with Young. The article also quoted some sources as saying that what Moorer had done was "not in the operational manual for his office," and other sources who labeled the pilfering as reasonable under the circumstances. These latter sources article

—

—

argued that because Kissinger had not shared his information with the military,

it

was "not so impossible

to

understand that a liaison

man

in

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

384

the Security Council would do

what he could

to get information back

to his boss."

In the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times that weekend, the competing reporters continued to point at Moorer. Squires's sources had told him that when Nixon had found out about the espionage he'd been so angry that he had considered firing Moorer; Hersh wrote that his sources "wondered why, in the face of the reported evidence amassed by Mr. Young, Mr. Nixon reappointed the admiral [Moorer] to a second two-year term" in mid- 1 97 2. The White House continued to deny that Moorer had been involved, but those denials no longer held water. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger said through a spokesman that he had interviewed Moorer, who had denied any

involvement in the spying.

A later statement issued

by Schlesinger put

the blame for the espionage on the "overzealousness" of people in the liaison office.

That weekend, there was one headline that was good news for Haig and Buzhardt. Senator Stennis announced that the Armed Services Committee, which he chaired, would hold hearings on the espionage next month, and that "x\s far as the published implications that Admiral Moorer was spying on Kissinger, it'd take hard substantial facts to

prove

it."

little to say on the subject, comment." And, reflecting Sam Ervin's viewpoint, Watergate Committee Chief Counsel Dash flatly ruled out any inquiry into the spying charges. This isolated Senator Baker even more, and forced him to continue his inquiries behind the

Curiously, Jaworski's office had very

issuing to reporters only a terse "no

scenes.

On January

18, the Post

story that deprecated the

got into the military espionage matter in a

way others were pursuing

it.

Under

Stern's

byline was an analysis designed to bury, not to disinter, Moorer-

Radford: "The

tale

of the alleged Pentagon spy ring opened with dark

overtones of 'Seven Days in May.' But as the story evolved veering toward 'Catch-22' with accents of

'M*A*S*H.'

"

it

was

Citing the

confusion surrounding the story. Stern asked, "Was the file-snitching operation the handiwork of a full-fledged 'military spy network'

(New

York Times) or of principally two officers (Washington Post)?" He crowed that the 'Times had eventually reached the same conclusion as the Post

when

it

quoted sources on January 16

as saying "the

spying

episode had been blown out of proportion."

That was not the entire truth. Hersh also had written that while some officials disparaged Young's work, others took Young's findings very, very seriously. Later, Hersh clarified this by writing that the

— Moorer-Radford Disinterred "high White House

officials"

who

attacked the

the thinking of presidential counsel

J.

385

\bung inquiry

reflected

Fred Buzhardt.

Jack Anderson weighed into the reportorial battle with a detail

—

new

that Moorer's assistant, Captain Arthur K. Knoizen, had re-

some of the purloined papers from Welander. Now Moorer decided it was time for him to say something in public. In an interview on NBC's "Today" show on January 18, the day of the Posfs analysis debunking the seriousness of the espionage charges, Moorer made a categorical denial: "The mere thought that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were cut off from sources of information and then set about to establish a system of acquiring this information in an unauthorized way is ceived

ludicrous, ridiculous and a lie."

shown him

"a

file"

He did acknowledge

that

Welander had

of documents improperly obtained by Radford, but

contended the papers were "essentially useless" and that he had told Welander to put them back when he learned that they had been taken without permission.

At that very moment, the materials that controverted xMoorer's assertions, the transcript of the Ehrlichman- Young interview with Welander of December 22, 1971, and the transcript of the BuzhardtStewart interview with Welander of January 7, 1972, both sat in the White House files under the control of Haig and Buzhardt. But nobody else could then get at those buried documents. On the basis of Moorer's public denial, Secretary of Defense Schlesinger announced on Monday, January 21, that he was effectively ending the Pentagon's investigation of the alleged espionage. Four days later, Schlesinger told reporters that Moorer had been exonerated even though there were "clearly improprieties" in the way documents had been funneled from the White House to the Pentagon. What improprieties? Schlesinger admitted they had included breaking into Kissinger's briefcase and the pilfering of documents that were to have been burned. Even more important for our concerns, Schlesinger admitted to reporters that Buzhardt had refused to turn over to one of his aides the Ehrlichman- Young taped interrogation of Welander. He appeared to accept with equanimity the remarkable spectacle of a man who had been one of his nominal subordinates counsel to the department refusing to turn over something to his office. But he did attack the David Young investigation of the matter. Schlesinger said he had never been allowed to read Young's report, but he asserted he had no confidence that it was correct. The one question on everyone's mind during the period just after the matter broke through to public consciousness was what Kissinger would have to say about it. The secretary of state was on a ten-day

—

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

386

mission to the Middle East at the

came back from

moment

the headHnes began.

When

comment. On January 22, Kissinger went before the press and said, "I have no reason to question the argument that has been made by Admiral Moorer, that this incident of the unauthorized transfer of papers from my office to his office reflected overzealousness on the part of subordinates and in any case gave him no information that he did not already Kissinger

that trip, he agreed to

possess."

Gone was

Kissinger's

"mood

indigo" and his rage after learning of

demand

Moorer be fired as Bottom perch and keeping himself aloof from Watergate, Kissinger said he had known about the pilfering, but that it had been inconsequential. Yes, he told reporters, Ehrlichman had allowed him to listen to the Welander interview, and he had known that David Young was involved in VVelander's interrogation but he had not known that Young had been the espionage, a rage that included the

JCS

chief.

Now

that

secretary of state, secure in his Foggy

—

involved in his capacity as a

member

of the Plumbers. In fact, he

pointed out, Nixon had ordered that he, Kissinger, be kept away from those matters.

With Kissinger

joining Schlesinger, Moorer, Haig, and Buzhardt

in a cover-up, the defenders of the secret of Moorer-Radford

made

quite a formidable array of guardians.

During one of

their

December 1973 meetings, Haig allowed Jaworski

had not been subpoenaed and to read According to the Special Prosecutor's memoir, he found nothing relevant in what he listened to at that time. In January, Jaworski asked Haig for what was known as the "tape of tapes" a June 4, 1973, recording of Nixon listening to some of his conversations with Dean, and which included Nixon's discussions that day with Haig and Ziegler

to listen to presidential tapes that

some

files.

—

about what he'd heard.

That "tape of tapes" was far from innocuous. It was a road map that showed what other tapes might be germane to any criminal inquiry as Haig must have clearly understood. In Nixon's memoirs, he said that Haig came to him only once, in December 1973, with a Jaworski request for a group of additional tapes, and that Nixon granted the request based on Haig's report that "Jaworski had assured him [Haig] that this would be his [Jaworski'sJ last request for tapes." That was the situation when Jaworski, in early January 1974, approached Haig with his request for the "tape of tapes." Jaworski told I laig that if he could listen to the tape, he might be able to judge which additional tapes, if any, he would need. In The Final Days, the authors

—

Moorer-Radf ord Disinterred

387

claimed that despite Jaworski's plain statement that he intended to seek additional tapes, Haig

went

to

Nixon

for permission to turn the tape

over on the grounds that "this would probably be the

last

request from

Jaworski." In this account, Nixon told Haig to have Buzhardt listen to the tape and Buzhardt then

But Haig "persuaded" Nixon

recommended to release

it

in

that

it

not be turned over.

order to "bring the special

prosecutor's investigation to an end."

However inexplicable Haig's

actions as depicted in The Final Days

appear, the reality may have been worse. There is a possibility Haig himself made the decision to release the tape without asking Nixon for permission. Nixon's account of Jaworski's requests for tapes during this period and his reaction to these requests omits entirely any reference to a request by Haig for the "tape of tapes." Moreover, Jaworski wrote that when he asked Haig for the June 4 "tape of tapes," Haig responded "there would be no problem." Jaworski did report a subsequent problem with Buzhardt, but said this problem was resolved a short time later when Buzhardt phoned Haig. In any event, the result was predictably disastrous. The day after Jaworski listened to the "tape of tapes," he submitted a letter to the White House seeking twenty-five additional Watergate tapes. That request Haig had to take to Nixon, whereupon, according to The Final Days, "Nixon ridiculed Haig for his trust in Jaworski." An official letter from St. Clair to Jaworski turned down the request, and it was clear that the matter was heading for a court battle. Nonetheless, Haig and Jaworski continued to talk through their private

may

that

backchannel.

would move into the hands of Senator Stennis, on whom Buzhardt and Haig believed they could rely for a quick series of closed-door hearings that would reseal the tomb. With Rear Admiral Rembrandt Robinson dead since the May 1972 helicopter accident, and Mooter, Schlesinger, Welander, and Kissinger all guarding the gates, those hearings should have presented very few difficulties for Haig and Buzhardt. Two problems still remained, however: Young and Stewart. Young was not really a threat because in May 1973 he had been granted immunity by federal prosecutors in exchange for his own testimony and the release of some documents. Stewart was another matter, and to neutralize him Haig and Buzhardt sprang into action in the latter part of January. On the twenty-fourth, Stewart was on sick leave, at home and in bed, when his secretary telephoned with the news that Bob Woodward had been trying to reach him to discuss a Shortly, the Moorer-Radford inquiry

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

388

matter "of

vital

concern," the phrase Stewart later used in a memoran-

dum

on the incident. Stewart called back and, according to the memorandum, Woodward "informed me that I was being accused of blackmailing The White House into giving me the job of Director of the FBI, and that failing. Deputy Director." Woodward mentioned to Stewart his June 25, 1973, letter to Baroody, and told him that Woodward's source had passed on the notion that Stewart had sought to use his knowledge of the Moorer-Radford case to secure the FBI post. Stewart denied pressuring the White House, and said that he felt he was qualified for a high post at the FBI and that the letter had only put forward his qualifications and ensured that he be considered as a candidate. Clearly,

Woodward had

gotten this information from the White

House. But so had Seymour Hersh. On January 25, both the Washington Post and The New York Times published stories saying that Stewart had

way into a high-ranking FBI job by threatening to what he knew about Moorer-Radford. Hersh's article said that Haig had intercepted a Stewart threat intended for Nixon and had subsequently told Stewart personally to "go to hell. General Haig subsequently confirmed the incident without naming Mr. Stewart and said that he had not been discharged from the Pentagon post for fear that he would make the facts known publicly. Mr, Stewart could not be reached for comment. His telephone is unlisted." Stewart denies Haig's claim, saying he and Haig had never talked about the matter. But there is one further interesting aspect to the story: by confirming to Hersh the report that he told Stewart to go to tried to pressure his

disclose

hell,

Haig

in essence corroborated that

to discredit Stewart,

though the

article did not

Under the Woodward-Bernstein tempted blackmail had quite

he had been part of the effort

make

that point.

byline, the story of Stewart's at-

a different slant.

The

Post reported the

charge within the broader context of a story about additional FBI telephone taps on the phones of Radford and his friends in late 1971

and early 1972. Another revelation in this article said that Stewart's someletter to Baroody had been forwarded to Justice by Buzhardt that knew. did contain the fact thing that very few people The article Justice had determined that Stewart had not violated the law, and included the denial that Stewart had given over the phone to Wood-

—

ward.

Don

Stewart was shaken by these twin front-page allegations, and

about 10:30 a.m. on January 25 he reached Seymour Hersh and denied any attempt at blackmail. He told Hersh as the story was printed on the following day "I was looking for a job, no question about it. But

—

—

— Moorer-Radford Disinterred

I

wasn't trying to put the muscle on them.

I

389

don't have a

damn

thing

and I didn't shake anybody down." In that follow-up article, Hersh went on to report that "Stewart suggested that some officials in the White House or elsewhere might have acted improperly in their handling of the snooping investigation," and that Stewart said he would be "tickled to death" to testify before any congressional inquiry into the subject. Hersh also reported that Pentagon spokesman Jerry Friedheim had confirmed that Stewart still retained the top investigator's job at the Pentagon, and that Friedheim had commented, "The general feeling here is that he's a good investigator." Hersh later admitted that he had not made a diligent enough effort to get in touch with Stewart for the original story. "It's my fault for not checking it farther," he now says, and recalls that he was pressed by a deadline and concerned about getting beat on the story by a competing newspaper. "There's no question I should have gone to him [Stewart] and got a comment and been balanced." The two men subsequently smoothed over their differences. Stewart was further bolstered on Jafiuary 29, when one of Schlesinger's special assistants, Martin Hoffman, called Stewart to his office and shared with him all of the Justice documents that showed Stewart had been cleared of to hide

potential blackmail charges

more than

six

months

earlier.

Stewart

wrote a memorandum after he had looked at these documents, and noted that Garment and Buzhardt had told Baker and Ervin that Stewart was blackmailing the White House on July 27, when the White House lawyers had been informed on July 10 that there was no evidence for making a prosecution of Stewart on that claim. In an important revelation buried deep in Hersh's follow-up story, one small paragraph suggested that Stewart had disclosed to Senator Baker's staff that the December 1971 investigation "had determined that many National Security Council documents had, in fact, been provided to Admiral Moorer." This was the first indication to those who were not members of the inner circle that Stewart could be a crucial witness about Moorer- Radford if asked to give sworn testimony. On January 31, 1974, Don Stewart went to a meeting of former FBI agents accompanied by a large poster that he had prepared. He propped it up on an easel just outside the meeting room. It read: In recent articles in newspapers,

attorneys called for the

me

a

I

have been maligned

"blackmailer" and stated

FBI director and deputy director

Baker allegedly referred to

me

as a

job.

I

would welcome

—White House

tried to pressure

Not

true!

its

them

.... Senator

"crook or a nut." Believe

breaking a good domestic espionage case has

people are involved.

I

me

problems when high

a congressional hearing.

24

SENATOR STENNI8

HOLDS A HEARING

IN

January 1974, Senator John Stennis met privately and individually with Moorer, Welander, Kissinger, Schlesinger, and Haig, and then decided on his strategy for the forthcoming hearings about late

Moorer- Radford.

It

would be

a

one-day, closed-door hearing.

members of Stennis' Armed Services Committee strongly disagreed. Harold Hughes of Iowa, a liberal Democrat, had been a crucial player in a previous investigation of the secret bombing

One

of the fifteen

campaign against Cambodia. Then, in Hughes's opinion, the committee had produced a whitewash. Now, he was insistent: "No once-overlightly in executive session with Admiral Moorer or Kissinger is going to suffice," he told The New York Times. Radford and Young should be called as witnesses, and the much-debated Young report should be turned over to the committee, because "the stakes are very high here.

.

.

.

This involves the

advisers to be in

command

abilitv of the chief executive

and

his

of an operation and to keep to themselves

whatever information they have." Hughes's comments were offered on the same day that Hersh published major new information on the story, February 3. He wrote

390

Senator Stennis Holds a Hearing

391

had started in September 1970, when Radford had started at the Haison office, and continued until it was discovered at the end of 1971; and he reported that documents had been handed to Robinson, Welander, Knoizen, and Train. Hersh also made clear that Radford's pilfering had taken place almost daily and that it had been regarded as especially important during the Haig and Kissinger over-

that the espionage

seas trips.

These were major

revelations,

and demanded to be examined by Armed Services Committee,

the proper authorities, for instance, the

which had an oversight

responsibility. Unfortunately for the cause of

the unearthing of the truth, those hearings were in the crafty hands of

John Stennis, the man who,

in

James Doyle's phrase, "had rigged many

a congressional hearing."

Senator John Stennis banged down the gavel to begin the hearing on February 6 in Room 212 of the Russell Senate Office Building. Eight of fifteen senators, plus various aides, were present to hear the first witness, Admiral Thomas Moorer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

There was some press interest in this hearing, but major attention was focused on another action taking place in the Congress that day: By a vote of 410 to 4, the House of Representatives authorized the Judiciary Committee to investigate President Nixon and determine if he should be impeached. The committee was granted broad subpoena powers.

Moorer insisted that he had excellent relations with Kissinger; that was why the charges "sicken me as a man, concern me as a military officer, and deeply disturb me as the nation's senior uniformed official." He testified: "I gave no orders, issued no instructions, gave no encouragement either direct or implied to anyone to collect or retain in any irregular or unauthorized manner any information, papers, or documents from the NSC." He'd never learned of the contents of Welander's interview with Ehrlichman and Young, and never read any of the investigative reports. Everything he knew came from a briefing given to him by Fred Buzhardt on January 5, 1972. When he found out what had happened, he told Welander to return any bootlegged papers to the White House. Yes, he'd seen documents from the Kissinger and Haig trips, but in both cases, these had told him nothing he hadn't already known, and he therefore had regarded the documents as insignificant. The committee did not have the evidence before it to challenge Moorer. For one thing, Mel Laird had not been called to testify, even though he was sitting in the White House, packing up his belongings In front of Stennis' committee,

—

—

— EXIT THE PRESIDENT

392

preparatory to leaving for a job with Reader's Digest, and he fully

expected such

He

a call.

even expected Stennis to ask for the Buzhardt

me," he recalls. According to Laird, would serve no useful purpose" to conduct a full

report, but "Stennis never asked

Stennis "thought

it

inquiry.

Thomas J. Mclntyre, Democrat

New

Hampshire, asked good question. If, as Moorer had testified, he usually had his aides screen the voluminous material that was routed to him, why would his close aide Welander hand-deliver supposedly insignificant papers? iVloorer quickly started to change his story. "I did not term the papers unimportant the papers were important, but I had already Senator

Moorer

of

a

.

.

.

acquired the information."

Evidence that would have raised serious questions about those Welander interviews or in the

assertions could have been found in the

meeting notes of the

NSC,

but the committee didn't have such docu-

ments.

Moorer concluded two hours of testimony by saying that not "one word" about the espionage matter had ever been mentioned to him by Nixon, even though they were in frequent personal contact. "He has never indicated anything but complete satisfaction with the way I handle

my

The

job."

next witness was Henry Kissinger,

who conceded that "exmemos to Nixon, had

tremely sensitive" papers, such as his personal

not been designed to be shared outside the White House. Nevertheless,

was "absurd to argue that there was any subject of any major significance that was kept from the Joint Chiefs of Staff." Kissinger artfully avoided denying that there had been any spying but he did say that if the military had really objected to any of his or Nixon's policies, "that opposition was never made explicit at any of the he

testified,

it

many meetings"

of the

NSC. "On

the contrary,

all

of those policies

were supported by Admiral Moorer. ... I was never conscious of any disagreement between myself and Admiral Moorer." The Kissinger-Moorer love fest continued. Moorer knew all of his positions, the secretary of state said, for instance in regard to talks with the North Vietnamese; perhaps "he [Moorer] might have thought that we would surface those positions in the open sessions in Paris, when in fact they surfaced at secret meetings." That was not such a big deal. Yes, he had been "enraged" when he had listened to a portion of the Welander-Khrlichman- Young interview and thereby learned that his briefcase had been broken into, but later he had "calmed down" and concluded that there really could not have been very

much

military

spying, "considering the confidential relationship that existed before,

Senator Stennis Holds a Hearing

393

the close association, and the total absence of any friction" between

himself and the Joint Chiefs. fit

of pique."

He

He had

abolished the liaison office "in a

sloughed off questions from Symington and others,

and by late afternoon Stennis declared that the "cross-examination" of Moorer and Kissinger had convinced him that the two men were clean. Stennis came outside and told reporters that "I don't see them [Moorer and Kissinger] as the root of any conspiracy," but did announce that the committee would call Welander and Buzhardt, and bring Radford from the Pacific Northwest. Moorer told reporters that he had twice recommended that court-martial proceedings be initiated against Radford, but "civilian authorities" had overruled him. Michael Getler of the Post reported that "Moorer's apparent willingness to court-martial Radford to determine his 'guilt or innocence' would appear to contradict allegations that it was Moorer who was secretly behind the alleged plan to spy on Kissinger's operation." That was the message Moorer was trying to convey by his disingenuous remark that other people had decided against going after Radford. Radford was now the center of the controversy, and the committee moved to bring him to Washington for a private meeting with Stennis. The yeoman had learned a few things in the past three years. Before leaving the Naval Reserve Center in Salem, Oregon, for Washington, he decided to consent to an interview with CBS correspondent Mike Wallace, who had convinced Radford to appear on camera on that coming Sunday's edition of "60 Minutes." Thursday evening, February 7, Wallace broadcast over the CBS radio network part of a voice-only interview with Radford, in which Radford said he had done his work for Robinson and Welander, who had created the climate and strongly encouraged

him

to

do

so.

Sy Hersh of The New York Times had learned of Radford's trip to Washington, and cornered him at the airport concourse in Denver,

where Radford was changing planes on February 8. "The yeoman acknowledged that he had pilfered hundreds of documents [that] were funnelled to the office of Adm. Thomas H. Moorer," said a dispatch Hersh sent from the airport. When Radford arrived in Washington, Stennis convinced him to stop talking to the public and to cancel the interview with "60 Minutes," previously scheduled for Sunday. "Stennis had me under wraps in Washington for three days," Radford says. Accompanied by a lawyer he had retained, Radford met Stennis and his aides in the senator's office on Saturday, February 9, and "told them everything." Afterward, Stennis told waiting newsmen that Radford "was cooperative fully and I have no complaints about him."

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

394

Congress was

in the

midst of

a

ten-day recess, and Radford was

when Congress reconvened. Meanwhile, Senator Baker was continuing his own inquiry. According to one of his aides at

scheduled to testify

the time. Senator Baker and his staff believed that Stennis' hearings

were "a farce," a judgment concurred in by Mel Laird. Stennis had Radford; Baker wanted to grab Don Stewart. At nine in the evening of February 7, Stewart received a phone call from his old FBI buddy Don Sanders, who was on Baker's staff. Would Stewart come to another meeting to discuss Moorer-Radford with Baker aide George Murphy? Stewart was tired. He'd already sat with Sanders, Liebengood, and Thompson in July and again in November what more could he tell Murphy, he asked Sanders. If such a meeting were really necessary, Stewart said, Sanders should clear it with Martin Hoffman, special assistant to Schlesinger. Next morning, Stewart himself wrote Hoffman a memo describing the previous evening's phone call from Sanders. Stewart was playing by the rules, making it clear to the civilian command at the Pentagon that he wasn't dealing secretly with Baker. The memo was addressed to Hoffman, who just ten days earlier had shared with Stewart the Justice file in which Stewart had first been accused and then cleared by Petersen and others. In the memo, Stewart said that he had advised Sanders that he thought the Watergate committee was "out of the action" on this matter, and that he did not want "to prejudice or preempt any testimony I may later have to give before Senator Stennis' committee should I be called." Just hours after he had fired off his memo to Hoffman, around one in the afternoon, Stewart received a call from Woodward. Getler had been handling the reporting of the military espionage in the Post for some weeks, yet Woodward wanted to talk to Stewart about the

—

accuracy of various charges being leveled in the hearings.

Woodward

mentioned something that Stewart felt the reporter should not have known that Radford and Jack Anderson had dined together two days before the publication of the tilt-to-Pakistan article. "This surprised me," Stewart later wrote of this phone call, "because this particular date had to come from the file," that is, from the file Stewart himself had compiled after his own interrogation of Radford. Not a hint of that Radford- Anderson meeting had surfaced in the press, and Stewart was convinced that someone with access to this report had leaked the information to Woodward. In his memo of the phone call, Stewart said, "This [fact about the Anderson-Radford dinner] and the general questioning Woodward put to me makes me believe that he, too, is being provided info from the White House." Two hours later. Woodward

—

Senator Stennis Holds a Hearing

called

395

back and asked Stewart about Fred Buzhardt. While the

earlier

conversation had been marked, Stewart wrote, by "five to ten minutes of sparring,"

Stewart took

Woodward was more blunt this second time around. down Woodward's main question verbatim, jotting it

at the bottom of his memo of the earlier call: "If Buzhardt told what he knew, could he contradict Adm. Moorer and bring about

down

Mooter's court-martial?" Stewart told

Woodward

that he didn't

know

what Buzhardt knew, and hung up. Five minutes later, Martin Hoffman called Stewart about the stillunresolved request from Baker's staff for Stewart to meet with them, and Stewart recounted his recent conversation with Woodward. Woodward's two calls to Stewart were reminiscent of his call to Welander in May 1973: They were attempts to find out information that was not particularly of interest to the reporter, but was of great interest to certain

What

men

did he know?

close to the president.

How much

Would Stewart

testify?

did Stewart understand of what

Buzhardt knew? Putting the best face on these phone calls, Woodward seemed to be trading information with his White House sources; putting a less good face on the phone calls, he seemed to be doing his White House sources' dirty work for them. In the ensuing days Woodward wrote nothing about Moorer-Radford or his conversation with Stewart.

On Monday,

February

11,

Hoffman

called Stewart with the

news

subpoena requiring Hoffman was going to get in touch with the Armed Services Committee and advise them of the Watergate committee's interest. The subpoena came in the afternoon, and it said the appearance was for the nineteenth, after Congress' recess, when Ervin was due to return to the capital. It was Baker, not Ervin, however, who met Stewart on the nineteenth, in the same room in which Alexander Butterfield had revealed his great secret seven months earlier. Baker was accompanied by his aides Sanders and Murphy, and by chief counsel Sam Dash. In two that the Watergate

committee was about to serve

a

Stewart's testimony at 10:00 a.m. the next day, and that

hours of sworn testimony, Stewart laid out for the

men

the entire

dimensions of Moorer-Radford, excepting Welander's references to in his confession, which he did not know about. As the questioning proceeded, it became obvious to Stewart that Baker and the staff had not seen any of the White House or Pentagon reports and memoranda on Moorer-Radford. For instance, the questioners wanted to know if Moorer had personal knowledge of Radford's

Haig

activities.

When

Stewart described his reports, such as the fourteenown interview of Welander, Baker asked, "Could

page transcript of his

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

396

you

tell

own

files

where we could locate them?" Stewart told Baker that his had been seized the previous May, and described the timing,

us

three days after he'd spoken to Tufaro about getting a job. "I think Fred

Buzhardt had them taken away," he said, and suggested attempting to obtain similar documents through Hoffman at Schlesinger's office. Baker wanted to know, "What is the big national security issue involved here?" The one that would cause Radford to be moved out of

town overnight, and the White House to pressure Ervin and Baker not to investigate the matter? "As a taxpayer, if I found out that the military was spying on a president of the United States, it would worry the hell out of me," Stewart responded. "Me, too," Baker said.

Moreover, Baker told Stewart, what troubled him was that the White House was now downplaying the entire episode and claiming that the allegations and news stories were overblown. That White House position is "inconsistent with the idea that it [Moorer-Radford] is of such huge national security importance. So what I'm after is, what is there in this that's of such huge national security importance?" No one in the room could answer that question.

The

Armed

Committee met behind closed doors to hear Yeoman Radford. Waiting reporters were handed transcripts of the Moorer and Kissinger testimony of two weeks earlier, following day, the

Services

and Radford's twenty-three-page opening statement. As that statement made clear, Radford was sticking to what he had told Stewart more than two years earlier: Robinson and Welander had encouraged him, and Chairman Moorer had received hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages of highly sensitive documents that he would otherwise not have seen. Radford denied having leaked anything to Jack Anderson, and declared that he would not be the fall guy even for the senior Navy brass.

In front of ten senators, Radford gave chapter and verse about his

—what he had taken,

part in the military espionage

and praised him his

time

for his pilfering,

in the liaison office

and so on.

He

who had

seen

it

testified that during

he had passed to his superiors

twenty-five to thirty eyes only messages addressed to

at least

Nixon from

Kissinger and/or from Haig. Accompanied by an attorney and no

longer contrite, as he had been

Radford was no

when he

first

less straightforward: "All the

directions and advice of

my

superiors.

I

confessed to Stewart,

was following the was doing what I did

time

felt like I

I

good of the service. At no time did I feel the decision as to whether or not to do as I was told or asked to do was mine to make."

for the

— Senator Stennis Holds a Hearing Under questioning, he said that Robinson had papers from White House desks.

told

397 him

to collect

hammered at Radford and Strom Thurmond, Buzhardt's old boss, asserted that Radford had no proof that Moorer knew of the clandestine operation. Asked by Hughes if he would "welcome a court-martial inquiry," Radford responded, "I have no qualms whatsoever about facing" Moorer or Welander "in public session. ... I will be glad to." Stennis and several of the Republicans

tried

shake his story.

to

Senator Sam Nunn made a rare inquiry about Haig's possible knowledge of the liaison office's clandestine operations. It was speculation to "examine someone else's mind," Nunn said, but did Haig know "that your whole job and the job of that outfit was to keep Admiral Moorer informed, or was this some kind of a very secretive operation

?" .

.

.

assumed that he [Haig] would know Admiral Robinson was reporting morning at the Pentagon, but he Admiral Moorer in the not only to would also report to General Haig. He sent memos to General Haig the same way we sent memos to Admiral Moorer." If Haig was "conscious of his activity and conscious of this being your job," Nunn asked, why would Haig "ask for or agree to your going on the trip with him?" "I have no idea," Radford responded, and veered off into another "No," Radford responded.

why Admiral Robinson was

"I

there.

subject.

The went

to

next day was Welander's turn before the committee, and he

some lengths

to refute

all

that

Radford had

the confessions he had made, Welander put

all

said.

Contrary to

the onus on Radford.

He had

"never ordered or directed" Radford to do any of the things Radford had charged, and moreover asserted that Radford had told him that he'd acquired "the documents on these trips in the regular course of his clerical duties." Had he learned the true source, Welander testified, "I can assure this committee I would have reacted. ... I would have put an immediate end to such activity." His predecessor Robinson, Welander asserted, had never talked to him about Radford's

Welander also accused Radford of being the source of the Anderson. There is a strong indication that Stennis had been able to see Buzhardt's January 7, 1972, Welander reinterview report the one that was silent on the connection of Haig to the members of the spy ring and that he shared it with close aides but not with his fellow senators. When committee lawyer Clark McFadden II cross-examined Welander, he asked a series of questions that could only have been derived

activities.

leaks to Jack

—

W

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

398

from that reinterview report. For instance, in that reinterview Welander cited troop withdrawals from Vietnam, and the negotiations to base a carrier group in Greece as examples of documents that Radford had obtained for him; McFadden asked about these in virtually the same words used in the reinterview report. Welander's denials were full and ringing in the early part of the day of questioning, but toward the end he began to make revealing statements, and he eventually acknowledged that he had retained about 25 percent of the contents of the bulging envelopes Radford brought back from the Kissinger trip, and that among these papers were a half-dozen key documents, including NSC documents calling for faster troop withdrawals from Vietnam than the JCS thought was warranted, as

memoranda

well as

of Kissinger's private conversations with various

people in Vietnam. But, Welander said, he only looked at these as

reminders to go and talk to the

An

NSC

staff

about these matters.

asked why Radford would have given Welander could have obtained the information through regular channels. Concluding his testimony, Welander responded, "Senator, I do not know. ... I never asked him to do this, incredulous

Sam Nunn

him such important papers

if

He did it. And, again, I guess I should have told him not to." Having heard from Moorer, Kissinger, Radford, and Welander, the committee's next logical step would have been to obtain testimony from Ehrlichman, Young, and Stewart. Several senators on the panel expected to do so, and to press for the documentary evidence. Chairman Stennis had a different idea. He told reporters that the hearings would continue at some point in the future, but didn't know when, because the committee had important budget business to handle. Meanwhile, the revelations continued in the press. Seymour Hersh wrote an article published by The New York Times on February 24 in which he reported that "sources close to the inquiry" told him that Nixon "personally ordered" that there be no prosecutions of any military figures even though Nixon had been "extremely angry about the pilfering of high-level documents that were not intended for the Pentagon." Nixon, Hersh wrote, had "decided to cancel the inquiry after consultation" with Mitchell. The article stated that Nixon feared exposing the secret negotiations then in process, including the opening to China, the SALT negotiations, and the Vietnam peace talks; these, the article said, would have been seriously threatened had the president tried to punish the Joint Chiefs. "You could call this a brutally realistic;! exercise in Presidential judgment," a White House source was quoted sir.

I

[ '

as observing.

The

following day the Washington Post weighed in with a long

Senator Stennis Holds a Hearing

399

showed that Moorer had been running an espionage operation, and that after it was discovered, "a rather shabby deal was then struck between the White House and the Pentagon to keep the whole thing quiet. President Nixon for reasons it would be interesting to learn was evidently unwilling to take on the Pentagon." The Post noted that Kissinger "now echoes Adm. Moorer," and that Schlesinger did, too, and concluded, "it smacks, in a word, of coverup." Curiously, this editorial is at odds with the Post\ rather casual reporting on Moorer- Radford, and instead echoes the seriousness with which Hersh and The New York Times editorial suggesting that the evidence presented to date

.

.

.

—

—

handled the story.

During January and February, Haig talked to Nixon about what he said was going on in the Special Prosecutor's office. Haig painted a favorable picture of Jaworski, telling Nixon that Jaworski "was being very expansive and cooperative in evaluating the situation that the staff inherited from Cox had a number of 'fanatics' " that Jaworski was having difficulty keeping under control, and that "Sirica was really a friend of the president," who would not take kindly to the idea that Cox's leftover staff was "more interested in 'getting the President' than .

.

.

in getting the facts."

Indeed, the Special Prosecutor's staff was restive about Jaworski's

James Doyle, "Nobody in the mind because he chose not not completely." There was also no evidence

private dealings with Haig. According to office

was quite sure what was

to confide in us, at least

that Sirica

was

in

in Jaworski's

any way disposed against the

leftover staff for their

supposed zealousness, as the judge continued to press vigorously to get to the bottom of the affair, as he had done for the entire year that the matter had been before him in the court. On March 1, 1974, the grand jury handed up indictments that named Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Mardian, Strachan, and Kenneth W. Parkinson (a CRP attorney) in the Watergate coverup.

That day the prosecutors

also

handed

to

Judge

Sirica a sealed

envelope and a briefcase. These contained the grand jury's

still-secret

naming Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator, and materials had been sought unsuccessfully so far by the House Judiciary Committee, which had been charged with the responsibility for the impeachment inquiry. Negotiations began for those materials between the Judiciary Committee, the court, and the Special Prosecutor's office. This indictment exposed much of what Haig had been telling Nixon about Jaworski's behavior as nonsense. There was no way to consider the indictments of Nixon's former attorney general and his

report that

—

—

— EXIT THE PRESIDENT

400

former chief of staff as anything other than devastating to the president. If, by tidbits from the Jaworski backchannel, Haig had been shielding

Nixon from the imminence of this blow, when must have fallen all the harder.

When

full transcripts

it

came on March

1

,

it

of the Radford and Welander testimonies before

March 3, Post reporter Michael from something Welander had said in his own defense that he was carrying stuff to the White House, out of normal distribution channels and wrote this up as a story about the Pentagon going around Secretary of Defense Mel Laird. This second operation was "authorized but highly 'unorthodox,' " Getler wrote; he had learned that Laird and his deputy David Packard became aware that they were being cut out when at certain government meetings they noticed that Kissinger was working with material related to Vietnam that Defense had specifically not provided to the NSC the Stennis committee were released on

Getler picked up a

new

lead

—

—

adviser.

A

few days

later,

on March

The man who was

Buzhardt.

7,

Stennis called his final witness

counsel to the president (and

who had

been counsel to the Department of Defense until two months ago) but no a copy of his January 10, 1972, report to the hearings

also

—

brought

copies were given to the senators. Stennis told his colleagues they could

only read the document

bosom of

at the

committee

offices, since

it

was from "the

the executive branch," and strictly confidential.

It

could not

be removed from the premises or released or even disclosed to anyone else.

Senator Hughes was skeptical, and said that

report had nothing in

it

determined to have

released.

it

if

he found that the

that threatened national security, he

Buzhardt claimed

it

was

could not be

had been prepared for Laird, and that he had obtained it from Laird only on the condition that its contents be kept secret. "No one else saw this report," Buzhardt told the senators. "No released because

it

other copy was kept of

it."

"Stennis never asked

me

for the report," Laird told us,

believes that the full Senate "did not

want

and firmly

to get into this [Moorer-

Radford]."

Buzhardt

testified

very carefully.

He had

relied

on Stewart's

infor-

mation to conclude that Radford "was most probably" Jack Anderson's source, but the case had been "entirely circumstantial," and that was

why

had not been pursued for prosecution. He admitted that Welander had told him of the pilfering and that the admiral had seen testimony that refuted both that of the product and passed it onward it

—

— Senator Stennis Holds a Hearing

401

Welander and Moorer. But he carefully stopped short of saying that Moorer had seen anything important. He also minimized the importance of Don Stewart "I think I did have Mr. Stewart present to take notes" at the Welander reinterview and of the two other major documents that would have skewered his own testimony, the Ehrlichman interview of Welander, and Young's hefty investigative report. There was "no material substantive difference," Buzhardt testified, between that January 7, 1972, reinterview and the taped interview of Welander on December 22, 1971, further burying the single piece of evidence that contained the significant references to Haig. Finally, he asserted that Young's report "had available almost precisely the same information from which I prepared my report," and therefore the senators had no need to consult it. Symington, in a written question, threw Buzhardt what should have been a curve. Why had Buzhardt refused to provide the tape of his interview with Welander to Schlesinger in mid-January? In his written answer, Buzhardt batted the question away neatly, saying that he had resigned as counsel to the Pentagon on January 4, and thus Schlesinger had no authority over Buzhardt at the time the secretary's request was made! It was the complete explanation of the peculiar timing of his resignation from that particular post. In the hearing, under questioning Buzhardt did an astounding thing. He chucked overboard the entire line of defense that had been taken for years by Nixon and everyone else: "I do not believe [my endanger the national sereport] contains material which would be

—

—

curity

if

released."

So: the claim of national security had

all

been

a

sham. While the

senators were reeling from that revelation, Buzhardt told

unfortunately

though, a

them

that

—he did have another problem with releasing the report,

new

correspondence,

The report contained "private pieces of memorandums" between Laird and other Defense

difficulty:

and the White House. These papers were "quite sensitive. They deal with the actual workings of the NSC." Moreover, it wasn't officials

fair to release

sions"

and

the report because

relied in part

it

contained only

"summary conclu-

on polygraph examinations

that

were not

admissible in court and could possibly be construed as "libelous" to

Charles Radford.

This surprising defense of why the report could not be released was body debated among the senators. Mclntyre, Goldwater, Symington, and Hughes all stated during Buzhardt's testimony that they wanted to see both his report and that of David Young obviously to compare them.

—

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

402

Senatorial

push then came

colleagues that he was

still

to senatorial shove.

Stennis told his

"negotiating" with Buzhardt over both those

reports and there was a fifty-fifty chance the committee

would eventu-

both of them. Hughes weighed in with the observation that the investigation was far from complete, and that two or three other ally get

witnesses should be called, principal

among them, Ehrlichman. With

demand, Stennis exploded. He began openly to advise Buzhardt let the committee see the document he had waved about, after all. "So this report that you had with you, just take it back. I don't want to see a line of it." By this point in the hearings, the other senators had left the room and only Stennis and Hughes remained. Hughes pointed out that Stennis had promised them the report in the morning, and that he, Hughes, had a "moral obligation to read the report that you said is available to us." Stennis then closed a parliamentary trap by telling Hughes that since there were only two senators in the room, no action could be taken. Hughes continued to assert that he would ask Buzhardt if he could see the report privately, and Stennis warned him that this would not do, and if Hughes went to the press, that would "just kill every chance" that the committee had of ever getting the report from this

not to

Buzhardt.

The hearing was over, and would not call any further witnesses. Nor would it ever obtain the document from Buzhardt, and it would not even issue a

had

left office.

final

report on the matter until six

On March

7,

months

after

Nixon

1974, the disinterment had not discovered

the major evidence, but the second funeral was declared over, and the gates of the cemetery were then closed.

Moorer retired at the end of his second chairman of the Joint Chiefs, after forty-one years of service to his country. Welander, identified as one of the major culprits in the committee's late report, was pressured to retire in 1975, after thirty years in the Navy. "My name had been spread all over the goddamned press," he told us bitterly, "and the Navy doesn't take something like Shortly, in June, Admiral

term

as

that lightly."

May

Haig and Buzhardt, and unwittingly and to a lesser to keep Moorer-Radford from surfacing. They had lost many skirmishes, because much of the information had now been made public, but with the conclusion of the Stennis hearings it was clear that they had won the decisive battle to keep Haig's name away from the issue of the military spy ring. In the hands of a determined and thorough investigative body, the tape of the Since

extent

1973,

Len Garment, had labored mightily

Senator Stennis Holds a Hearing

403

Ehrlichman-Young-Welander interview, with its references to the adwith Haig, could have led to questions about the "very, very sticky relationships" that Welander had mentioned to Ehrlichman and Young. Len Garment today says he didn't know what battle he was really fighting at the time. He did not then know the dimensions of MoorerRadford. Asked by us recently whether Haig had a conflict of interest when he came back into the White House as the new chief of staff in miral's dealings

May

1973,

Garment

replied, "Conflict of interest, capital C, capital

O,

capital I."

Why

did Buzhardt conduct his reinterview of Welander, an inter-

view that carefully avoided the significant references to Haig that had appeared in Welander's earlier confession to Ehrlichman and Young? Since neither Laird nor Nixon had ordered the reinterview, Buzhardt must have done it on his own, or at the request of the only man who had benefited from that reinterview, Alexander Haig who, as the reader will recall, had listened to the Ehrlichman- Young tape about two weeks before the Buzhardt reinterview. Had Buzhardt and Haig, schooled in the ways of Washington, arranged for Welander to be

—

questioned again with the express purpose of using

it

as a last line of

defense in the event that someday an inquiry might find Haig's door?

I

its

way

to

25

THE REAL FINAL DAYS

TWO weeks after Buzhardt reappeared in public as the last witness at the

Stennis hearings, he took his place at the head table as James St.

Clair held a two-hour meeting with also attended

by Haig and

Ziegler.

Nixon about his defense, a meeting was the first time in three months

It

that Buzhardt had joined such a discussion, but with

back

in

its

Moorer-Radford

grave he could rejoin the inner circle, and in the ensuing

months of April and May, Buzhardt continued to sit in on all such sessions with Nixon, as well as to meet with the president and Haig without St. Clair present. During those months, St. Clair virtually never saw the president without Haig or Buzhardt being present, though Haig had said when he initially hired St. Clair that he himself was too swamped with other duties to devote enough attention to the president's legal defense.

Shortly, there were reports in the press that St. Clair was not being

allowed to review the tapes

House was

—the very evidence over which the White

battling the Special Prosecutor

and Congress. Buzhardt was

reviewing the tapes for St. Clair because, as Congressional Quarterly noted, the White

House "was not

willing to allow St. Clair to

404

make

his

The Real Final Days own judgement" on how many the Boston

tapes should be turned over.

Nor was

attorney being allowed to deal with Jaworski directly.

trial

Woodward and

405

Bernstein wrote in The Final Days:

Even with James

St.

Clair

on the scene, Haig thought he ought

to

maintain the personal relationship he had so carefully nurtured with Jaworski.

He

informed

St. Clair that

he would continue to act as the

pipeline to the special prosecutor's office.

focus totally on the

That would allow

impeachment inquiry. ... At

to avoid a court battle

all

costs,

St. Clair to

Haig wanted

with Jaworski over additional tapes, the very

question of future access which had figured in Cox's

firing.

—

Woodward's and Bernstein's account was precisely wrong or, perhaps, just badly influenced by the writers' sources, Haig and Buzhardt. For, as we have seen, Haig was doing all he could to provoke and intensify the court battle: Toward that end, Haig had facilitated Jaworski's efforts to obtain additional tapes, perhaps authorized

him

personally, and without referring the matter to Nixon, to listen to the

"tape of tapes," and played a scene of stunned surprise when Jaworski had come back with a demand for twenty-five additional tapes. In

mid-March 1974

Sirica ruled that the

House Judiciary Commit-

ought to have the evidence that Jaworski had turned over to the court on March 1 the evidence supporting the grand jury's designation of Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator in the cover-up. Sirica turned tee

,

over the briefcase

full

of evidence to the committee's chief counsel,

John Doar.

On

April

a joint congressional

3,

Nixon owed nearly

committee released a report that back taxes and interest

a half-million dollars in

because he had improperly deducted his to the National Archives.

gift

of vice-presidential papers

Rather than contest the matter, the president

agreed to pay $467,000 to the IRS.

On April 1 1 the Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena for fortytwo tapes. The committee vote was 33-3, indicating that Nixon's Republican support had eroded. One week later, responding to a request from Jaworski, Sirica issued a subpoena to Nixon to hand over sixty-four recordings to the Special Prosecutor; the second of the items ,

listed

would later become known as the "smoking gun" tape. Nixon figured that the most urgent challenge was the House impeachment inquiry, and decided that a stunning public relations move might throw the Judiciary Committee off stride. On the evening of April 29, Nixon appeared on national television, seated beside a

that

|i

contained the Haldeman-Nixon conversations of June 23, 1972,

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

406

stack of green loose-leaf books.

He announced

scripts of the forty-two recordings

that these

were tran-

subpoenaed by the Judiciary Com-

mittee, and that he was turning over these 1,308 pages of transcripts in

of the tapes.

lieu

been involved

He

would prove that he had not these were all that was needed to

asserted that these

in a cover-up,

and that

"get Watergate behind us."

They were not.

Public reaction to the transcripts was quite negative;

the expletives had been deleted, but not the thought behind them.

People objected to the bald language, the discussions of hush payments

and stonewalling, and the atmosphere of suspicion and hostility that pervaded the Nixon White House and that the transcripts laid bare. For the first time in American history, Americans had been taken directly into the Oval Office and made privy to hours upon hours of the conversations that went on in that inner sanctum; what they learned appalled them. Even stalwart Nixon defenders like Senate Minority Leader

Hugh

Scott declared that the transcripts were "deplorable,

More

on the day after the Committee transcripts were officially released. May 1, rejected them and informed Nixon that he had failed to comply with disgusting, shabby, immoral."

to the point,

the Judiciary

the subpoena.

Overlooked

in the reaction to the release

of the transcripts was any

comparison of them to John Dean's testimony, an examination would have revealed Dean's repeated lies under oath about his conversations with the president, and that also would have shown how Dean had misled Nixon. The focus was on the president, and he could close

that

not shake

it.

Just days after the release of the transcripts, the Judiciary

Committee began impeachment hearings; highlights from those hearings illuminated the nightly news broadcasts. Jaworski was on a collision course with the president over the tapes, but wanted to avoid a confrontation. He called Haig, and when Haig returned from out of town on Sunday, May 5, the two men met alone in the Map Room. While two of Jaworski's aides waited nearby in the White House library with Haig's aide Major George Joulwan, the Special Prosecutor played his high card.

jury had voted 19-0 to

name Nixon

as

He

told

Haig that the grand

an unindicted co-conspirator;

still secret, and Jaworski was willing to keep it was eighteen of the sixty-four tapes, one of which was the June 23, 1972, recording. If those tapes were handed over, Jaworski told Haig, he'd keep the co-conspirator designation secret, and

this information

was

that way. His price

drop

But

his fight for the rest of the tapes, if

thereby ending the court case.

the president refused the deal and there was a court fight,

The Real Final Days

407

Jaworski would be forced to reveal the grand jury's action as part of his legal strategy to obtain the tapes.

Haig agreed to explore the idea, and brought into the room Jawortwo assistants and James St. Clair. The Boston lawyer was opposed to the deal. Haig was inclined to compromise, and went to Camp David to relay it to Nixon. "A form of blackmail," Nixon characterized the offer in his memoirs, but "the thought of actually ending the courtroom battle over the tapes was like a siren song. Haig felt it too." Nixon quoted Haig as saying, "We're at the point that we can see the barbed wire at the end of the street. What we have to do is mobilize everything to cut through it." (Nixon liked it when Haig talked military.) Haig urged Nixon to listen to those tapes and not to reject the offer "out of hand." Nixon agreed to put on the earphones. During the past several months, the Special Prosecutor had been able to obtain many of the tapes that had been identified as being the most potentially incriminating. Nixon had been forced into a corner. Presented with Jaworski's latest demand, Haig told Nixon that the choice of how to handle the situation was up to him, but in reality Nixon's options had been so drastically reduced that he could now ski's

choose only the timing of his

political suicide.

The instrument

lay in

wait in the midst of the batch of tapes.

Closeted in his

EOB

office,

Nixon began

to listen to the eighteen

May

5, and some time the following afternoon he reached the June 23 recording of his conversations with Haldeman. Almost immediately, he wrote in RN, his spirits fell. "I had

conversations on the evening of

my public statements that the sole motive for calling in been national security. But there was no doubt now that we had been talking about political implications that morning." He found his thoughts immediately forced back to the previous May, when the damaging Vernon Walters memcons had first surfaced, the first one of which concerned the meeting Walters and Helms had held with Haldeman and Ehrlichman, following Nixon's instructions to Haldeman on June 23, 1972. In May 1973, Nixon had discussed the matter with Buzhardt, who declared that Walters must have been indicated in the

all

CIA had

confused

when he wrote

the

memcon on June

28. "I

should have asked

Buzhardt to listen" to the June 23 tape then, Nixon thought; it could have been made public in May 1973 and that "would have been damaging, but far less so than being forced" to disclose it by the court

Nixon also remembered his discussions in the summer of Haldeman about the Walters memcons and the June 23 conversations, when Haldeman had visited the White House. Haldea year later.

1973 with

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

408

too, had distinctly remembered that the reason for calHng in the had been national security, not politics but they had both been wrong in their memories of June 23, 1972. Listening to the tape made

man,

—

CIA

that clear,

Nixon thought. all, Nixon wrote, the existence of

Worst of

mockery of addressed

his

why

May the

that tape

made

a

22, 1973, statement, especially of the portion that

CIA had

gotten into the act. Well, he would not

turn over these tapes to Jaworski, and would take his chances on a court

He

fight.

consoled himself with the idea that he had survived

another political disaster, and would survive this one, too.

many

eventu-

maybe other people would he and Haldeman had.

tape was forced from his hand,

ally, this

have the same trouble interpreting

As had happened failed to

If,

it

as

so often before to Nixon, in this situation he

pose the real questions.

the danger of the Walters

Why

memcons

hadn't Buzhardt warned

in time?

Why had

him of

Walters not been

Why had Jaworhe could successfully ask for more and more

prevented from releasing the documents to Congress? ski

been led

to believe

tapes?

Jaworski was informed that there would be no deal.

Two weeks

on May 20, 1974, Sirica upheld Jaworski's sixty-four-tape subpoena and ordered Nixon to turn over the recordings. The president appealed, and Jaworski countered with a risky and bold maneuver. He leaped over the heads of the appeals judges and petitioned the Supreme Court. On May 31, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. later,

In preparation for his

May

own

trial

on the Dr. Fielding break-in,

in late

1974 John Ehrlichman hit the White House with a broad subpoena

Ehrlichman was going to base his defense on the Nixon forbade any disclosure of the Plumbers' activities on the grounds of national security. When Ehrlichman had learned after the fact about the Dr. Fielding burglary he had remained silent because of the national security blanket. He subpoenaed the Welander interview tape and other documents of the Moorer-Radford

for his notes

and

files.

fact that in late 1971

investigation in order to argue that they proved the extreme sensitivity

of the national security secrets and the reason for Nixon's unequivocal

gag order.

The thrust for the Welander tape was as potentially damaging to Haig as Jaworski's thrust for the June 23 "smoking gun" tape was for Nixon. But while Haig had been willing to compromise on Nixon's behalf, he was not willing to bend on material that was so clearly threatening to him. Seven months earlier, when Bud Krogh had tried to force the Moorer-Radford material out, Haig and Buzhardt had told

The Real Final Days

409

Jaworski that there were grave national security issues at stake in them; that danger had passed when Krogh agreed to a plea-bargain. When Ehrlichman demanded the Welander tape, Buzhardt and Haig took the opposite tack. National security wasn't the issue, they Buzhardt moved to quash the subsaid, but executive privilege was poena on the latter grounds. Expecting this, Ehrlichman's lawyers then

—

moved for the case to be dismissed, saying there would be no way for them to prepare a proper defense without the material. Judge Gerhard Gesell initially sided with Ehrlichman and indicated he would approve the defense motion to dismiss the case if the White House continued to stonewall.

On June

more papers on Nixon's motion to quash the subpoena. His motion was accompanied by motions of Buzhardt and Haig to quash the subpoenas against them. The two aides had been identified by Ehrlichman as retaining control over the material in his files. Haig and Buzhardt filed supporting affidavits in which they denied "custody or control of any document or object" described in 6, St. Clair filed

Ehrlichman's subpoena. In fact, the tape and the transcript of the Welander interview were

hidden

at

the White

House along with

the detailed David

Young report Haig was, of

and other papers from the Moorer-Radford investigation. course, chief of staff and had been so for over a year. Ehrlichman showed up at the White House to try to review his files. He was forced to sit in a waiting area outside the presidential counsel's office that had once been his own, and wait for Buzhardt. "I never saw him," Ehrlichman says of that day, but "I was sitting in his outer office and I could hear through the door that Buzhardt was Hstening to the Welander tape" of the December 22, 1971, confession. "I could hear it through the door because it was turned up loud. I went back to my attorney, William Frates, and told him what had happened.

He

"

'We have to get our hands on that tape.' Shortly afterward, Buzhardt submitted a second affidavit asserting that there was nothing in the Ehrlichman files that was relevant to his defense in other words, no material covered by "national security." That flag had been of use in November, against Krogh, but it was said,

—

down and "executive privilege" run up the flagpole when Ehrlichman wanted the Welander tape. Ehrlichman tried to argue this, but Gesell accepted the Buzhardt representation. "With that ruling, much

taken

of the steam went out of our defense," Ehrlichman later wrote.

He continued to fight. A week later, his attorney submitted another motion asking for a subpoena, a motion that specifically discussed the JCS espionage inquiry and the backchannel. The motion asserted that

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

410

during the secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese, Nixon had ordered bombing strikes against Hanoi to add to the pressure

at the

bargaining table, that these strikes had been ordered directly through the Joint Chiefs, and that Moorer had been at the center of this

bombing backchannel. on

It

was for

this reason that

Nixon had put

—because disclosure "would have

the military spying episode

ously impaired the direct chain of

command

a lid seri-

to the Joint Chiefs of

Staff," Ehrlichman's attorney wrote. Therefore, they needed,

among

other items, Ehrlichman's notes from the meeting at which he had

advised Nixon of Welander's confession, as well as the notes of Nixon instructing

him

by national

security and their activities were not to be disclosed."

that "any testimony"

on the Plumbers unit

"is affected

This second subpoena of Ehrlichman's was still in the air on June 10, and the impeachment inquiry was into its second month of hearings, when Nixon flew to the Mideast. On the agenda were a week of talks in four Arab countries and in Israel. Only recently, after a month of exhausting shuttle diplomacy, Henry Kissinger had won acceptance from Syria and Israel for an American-sponsored accord to disengage their troops after the October 1973 war between the two nations. Nixon appeared at the height of his powers in Cairo on June 12: Hundreds of thousands of people shouted greetings and waved American flags as

Nixon and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat passed by them

in

open

cars.

In his diary,

Mideast

make

trip

Nixon comforted himself with the

idea that the

"put the whole Watergate business into perspective

us realize that

all

the terrible battering

we have

taken

is

—

to

really

pygmy-sized when compared to what we have done and what we can do in the future not only for peace in the world but, indirectly, to effect the well-being of people everywhere." But that wasn't what was really happening. Kissinger wrote in his memoirs that "at every press conference I was asked about the impact of Watergate on foreign policy. I consistently denied any relationship. Though everybody knew it to be untrue, only a show of imperviousness would enable us to salvage anything." According to Kissinger, both the Chinese and the Soviets were profoundly confused by Nixon's domestic political crisis. When he met with Mao Tse-tung in November 1973, Kissinger wrote, the Chinese leader's "principal concern was not specifically situation, Soviet policy, but our domestic our Watergate. ... He contemptuously dismissed the whole affair as a form of "breaking wind.' " However, Kissinger reported, China began to

"hedge

its

bets," waiting to join the U.S. in a policy of containing

the Soviet Union until Watergate "had played

itself

out."

The Real Final Days

411

As for the Soviet Union, according to Kissinger's book Years of Upheaval, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev told the United States ambassador to Moscow in 1974 of his "amazement that the United States had reached the point that the President would be bothered about his taxes," and ultimately, Kissinger wrote, Nixon "became less and less interesting to the Soviets as a negotiating partner." Nixon was also less and less interesting to Kissinger for the same reasons. Roger Morris, who has written biographies of Haig, Kissinger, and Nixon, told us, "It was Kissinger's view all through the latter part of 1973 and the spring of 1974 that Richard Nixon, really sooner rather than later, ought to go for the sake of the stability of the [NATO] alliance, the prospects of any kind of SALT II treaty, et cetera. There were grandiose calculations made about sacrificing this president, who, after all, had become a cripple." Morris recalled dining at the home of Kissinger's aide Larry Eagleburger in late 1973 and early 1974, when Watergate was "an obsessive topic of conversation" as to the effect it was having on U.S. foreign policy, "not just to Kissinger's initiatives in the Middle East, but to the great tenor of American relations abroad." Kissinger's "great dilemma," said Morris, was that Nixon had elevated him to secretary of state, yet in Kissinger's view "had to be gotten rid of." 19, Nixon weakened position had emboldened his

Returning to Washington from the Mideast on June realized the extent to

which

his

conservative opponents, the anti-detente forces within the government.

Nixon had steadfastly tried to adhere to initiatives rapprochement with the Soviets, an embrace of former enemy Communist China, and for limitations on nuclear and conventional In his foreign policy,

for a

arms.

and

its

By

early 1974,

many

Nixon wrote,

his

own

"military establishment

friends in the Congress and the country were

up

in

arms

over the prospect" that there might actually be a breakthrough on

from the Moscow, for

limiting offensive nuclear weapons. Five days after his return

Mideast, Nixon was due to the third U.S. -Soviet

fly

summit

abroad again,

this

time to

since the signing of the

SALT

accords

two years earlier. He had learned from Kissinger, Nixon wrote in his memoirs, that Brezhnev was complaining to the secretary of state about "confronting the same problems as we were of military opposition to a permanent agreement to limit offensive nuclear weapons." No major new proposals had been offered by either side. The NSC took up the subject of what should be done in this summit the day after Nixon returned from the Mideast. Defense Secretary Schlesinger had recently demonstrated his distance from Nixon by backing a position held by the leading anti-detente senator,

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

412

Henry "Scoop" Jackson,

the

Democrat from Washington;

had been the president. In the June 20 meeting it

an extraordinary public rebuff to Schlesinger presented a Pentagon proposal that, Nixon wrote, took "an unyielding hard line against any SALT agreement that did not ensure an overwhelming American advantage. were sure to reject out of hand."

It

was

a proposal the Soviets

and — Kissinger and Nixon both reported — Schlesinger made sharp, condescending "But,

Nixon said memoirs

their

just that,

as

in

reply:

a

Mr. President, everyone knows how impressed Khrushchev was with your forensic ability in the kitchen debate [when Nixon was vice president]. I'm sure that if you applied your skills to it you could get them to accept this proposal." The Schlesinger slap, Nixon wrote in his diary that night, was "a real shocker ... an insult to everybody's intelligence and particularly mine. Many of the Defense people don't want any agreement because they want to go ahead willy-nilly with all the defense programs they possibly can and they do not want .

.

.

constraints."

On

June 25 Nixon flew to Russia aboard Air Force One; the talks with Brezhnev that lasted until July 3 were cordial but brought no major breakthroughs, a result hardly surprising to the participants. According to Kissinger, the Soviet hosts were "uncharacteristically sensitive to Nixon's .

.

.

human predicament." They

could have "harassed

the old Communist-baiter" Nixon, but instead treated

"respect and courtesy." Even so, the

TASS

him with

statement reporting Nixon's

opening toast to Brezhnev removed the president's reference to a "personal relationship" with the Soviet leader and substituted a phrase saying that the two countries had a good relationship. "The Soviets were cutting their losses," writes Kissinger in citing this TASS statement, and they were doing so because they "had an interest in not tying a major policy to the fate of an individual." Petty spats among the Nixon entourage had marred the Mideast visit, and did so to an even greater degree in Moscow. "There was an unworthy dispute between Al Haig and me about whose suite in the Kremlin palace would be closest to Nixon's," Kissinger wrote, and noted that Haig had won that battle, though Kissinger lessened its importance by likening it to fighting "over seats at the captain's table on the Titanic after it had struck the iceberg." Upon his return to Washington on July 3, Nixon did not stay in the capital but instead flew to Key Biscay ne for the weekend. In the headlines for that day were notations that a new phase of the House Judiciary Committee's inquiry into Watergate had begun. For two months, the committee had been hearing evidence gathered by

its staff,

— The Real Final Days

413

including that given to them by the Special Prosecutor's office. 2,

On July

they began to hear from a parade of former and current Nixon

administration and campaign officials about the inner workings of the

White House. Alexander Butterfield was the first witness. He was questioned about his four years in the White House, and his role in Nixon's taping system; but during his testimony he pointed a finger at Alexander Haig's role in the 1969-1971 wiretapping program.

had all begun in the first year of the administration, Butterfield told the congressmen; December 29, 1969. The tap on Morton Halperin's phone had turned up some information on Clark Clifford, and FBI Director Hoover had written a letter to Nixon about it, being careful not to mention the phrase wiretapping, but using instead the standard cover language, "extremely sensitive source." Clifford was the former secretary of defense, a prominent attorney, and an important man in the Democratic Party. An unidentified male voice had been heard on the tap, and from it Hoover had concluded that Clifford was preparing an article, possibly for publication in Life magazine, that would attack It

Nixon's Vietnam policies. More important, the unidentified voice said

he was scheduled to meet with Kissinger that same day. Hoover's letter was routed to Magruder, then on Haldeman's

staff,

with the instruction to work up a counterattack to the forthcoming Clifford article. Magruder asked Butterfield for advice, and on January first of all 8, 1970, Butterfield wrote Magruder that "You should go

—

Al Haig" to find out who had met with Kissinger on December 29, and see if the caller could be identified. There were three other suggestions, and then a final one: "Al Haig can get you squared away on at least a preliminary scheme" for dealing with Clifford. A bit later, Magruder wrote a memo to Haldeman suggesting that Dean Acheson write an article for Look magazine to compete with Clifford's, and that he had asked "Al Haig to see if this could be done." These two documents, of course, might have led investigators to uncover Haig's prominent role in the 1969-1971 wiretaps but that fact had meant nothing to the Watergate investigation until those wiretaps had been revealed in the spring of 1973. These documents also exposed the truth about the wiretaps that they had been used to spy on political opponents and not to protect national security secrets. In amassing documents, the Special Prosecutor's office had at that time been given a memo written by Butterfield regarding Clark Clifford but the date on it was January 8, 1969, not January 8, 1970. When Butterfield had been called in to look at it, in the spring of 1973, he had immediately recognized it as a fake. to

—

—

—

— EXIT THE PRESIDENT

414

There were several things wrong with it. First, the memo was clean and seemed freshly typed; it wasn't dog-eared and didn't appear to be four years old. Second, the introductory wording to Magruder that Butterfield remembered, "in response to your query," had been excised. Third, the date was wrong. It was a date that preceded the wiretaps and even Nixon's inauguration. Fourth, the second to last paragraph, the one about Haig, was also gone. The net effect of this altered memo was to imply that Butterfield had sent unsolicited comments to Magruder, that he knew about the Halperin wiretap, and that he was trying to get Magruder to undertake an anti-Clifford project.

Convinced that the memo had been doctored by the White House who had given it to the Special Prosecutor's office Butterfield managed to search the White House central files. He found that his records for January of 1970 had been rifled and were missing. It took him many months to find a copy of the real memo that he had written, the one with the proper date in January of 1970, the words that showed it was in response to Magruder's query, and the paragraph suggesting that "Al Haig can get you squared away on at least a preliminary scheme. We can build from there." But by the time Butterfield appeared for questioning on July 2, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee had published both the fake memo and the true one, side by side, in one of its volumes of evidence and yet failed to

—

—

deal with the implications of the Butterfield says today he

whom

Haig, class

is

memos.

convinced that his old friend Alexander

now regards as "a worldmemo, because Haig was the only

he considered a close friend but

manipulator," fabricated this

person protected by the fake

memo.

was designed, Butterfield thinks, to throw the prosecutors off Haig's trail and onto his own. He recalls that the Special Prosecutor's office agreed with that suspicion because, among other reasons, it was Haig who had given them the memo: "the memo came from Haig. He was then chief of staff. ... He was the chief suspect" to have written

In the

game

of chess, the king

It

it.

is

not killed.

The game

the opposing player to resign while his king

Making sure there

is

is

still

won by

forcing

on the board.

no stalemate or draw is the great skill necessary to the correct play of what is known as the endgame. In the period between Nixon's return from Russia in early July, and his resignation on August 9, 1974, the endgame tactics of Haig and Buzhardt were especially brilliant. They have remained hidden or obscured in the intervening years, and we will reveal them in the following pages. is

The Real Final Days we

415

worthwhile to give Haig's and Buzhardt's Woodward and Bernstein book The Final Days. As noted earlier, Haig says he is currently writing his memoirs, and perhaps those will provide more Before

begin,

it

is

version of events, a version best encapsulated in the

about his version of that

last

month, but

for the present,

we have The

Final Days.

Nixon had been chasing the sun almost every day from Russia a long weekend at Key Biscay ne, a dozen days at San Clemente anything to stay out of Washington while the Judiciary Committee hearings were in process, and while the Supreme Court was deliberating about Jaworski's demand for the tapes. On the afternoon of the twenty-third, Nixon received word that all three Dixiecrats on the Judiciary Committee were now ready to vote against him, which meant certain defeat and the passage of an impeachment resolution. Nixon telephoned his old opponent, Alabama Governor George Wallace, to ask if he would pressure his fellow Alabamian, Representative Walter Flowers, and prevail upon him not to help remove a president from office. Wallace said no, and Nixon turned to It

was July

23

.

since he had returned

Haig and

The

—

—

said, "Well, Al, there goes the presidency."

next morning brought word to Nixon that the Supreme Court

had ruled, 8-0, privilege, the

in the tapes case. Rejecting

Nixon's claim of executive

Supreme Court reaffirmed the lower

court's ruling that

the president would have to hand over to Sirica the sixty-four record-

When Haig in San Clemente Buzhardt in Washington to discuss the decision, Nixon took the phone and asked Buzhardt personally to listen to the June 23 tape. In the Woodward-Bernstein version of events, that morning of July 24, 1974, was the first time that Buzhardt had listened to the June 23, 1972, tape, and he became immediately convinced that the evidence was fatal. Buzhardt promptly phoned Haig and told him they had now found the smoking gun they had all feared had been in existence. Nixon could survive no longer, Buzhardt told Haig. But Haig disings that included the June 23, 1972, tape.

called

agreed 27,

—even though he had never

Woodward

listened to the tape.

As

late as

July

and Bernstein wrote, Buzhardt "couldn't get any sup-

port" for his conviction "that the June 23 tape completely undermined the President's position.

.

.

.

Haig wasn't sure."

After this, the account continues:

The

general had expressed grave doubt that

job to force a President to resign. ...

the President, they really had

only staff men, after

all.

He and

it

was

his

and Buzhardt's

the lawyers had access to

undue influence over him. They were

Nobody had

elected them.

The

President was

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

416

elected

and

by the people. Suppose an ex-President were

their congressional allies of forcing

brushing perilously close to coup

make

notion that Nixon must

way

d'etat?

him out of .

.

the decision.

.

on

his part,"

Haig

insisted.

"We

office?

Were they

Haig now put forth the

It

—by the President, by the country, by the

a willing act

to accuse his aides

must be perceived

that

historians. "It has to

can't force

be

him."

So, in this version, in the ensuing days the heroic, selfless Haig

him make the decision to resign on his own. For instance, the WoodwardBernstein book quotes Haig as telling White House aide David Gergen that Nixon was "guilty as hell," but that they all had to see it through merely gave the president

all

the facts and the options, and

let

to the end.

Actually, in the days following the

Supreme Court

decision, Haig's

behavior toward Nixon was an act, part of a "good cop, bad cop" routine he and Buzhardt were playing. Buzhardt was insisting that the

no way out, while the general was bucking up him to believe he could pull through. The Final Days version is incredible on its face. If we accept the notion that Haig, who had custody of the tapes for over a year, never was curious enough to listen to at least those Jaworski had expressed a president had

the president and encouraging

strong interest in

—even accepting

the account remains.

Is it

that notion, a fundamental flaw in

credible that Haig

would not accept the

characterization of the "smoking gun" tape as the end of "the ballgame"

by White House counsel and Haig's good friend Fred Buzhardt without taking the trouble to listen to that tape and make his own judgment? Nixon was "standing in the beach trailer" at Red Beach, near San Clemente, he shirt,

and

when he

a

later

wrote, "barefoot, wearing old trousers, a Banlon

blue windbreaker emblazoned with the Presidential Seal,"

learned from a

Committee had approved

Ron

Ziegler telephone call that the Judiciary

Article

I

of an impeachment resolution, 27-

—

was July 27, the charge was obstruction of justice just the matter covered in the June 2 3 recording and "the vote went exactly the way I had feared," Nixon wrote. He would be the first president in 106 years to be recommended for impeachment. Two days later, the committee approved Article II by a 28-10 vote; it charged Nixon with systematic abuse of power and violations of citizens' constitutional rights, for instance in the 1969-1971 wiretapping program. In the following days, a third article would be also approved, while a fourth and fifth were rejected. A full vote in the House was set for August 19. 11.

It

—

The Real Final Days

On July

30,

Haig was called to

417

testify at a closed-door hearing of the

Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding those wiretaps.

It

was

a

long been trying to avoid. The impetus for the hearings had come during an emotional news conference in June when Kissinger and Nixon were on their triumphant tour. Kissinger had denied new allegations that he had personally ordered wiretaps on his NSC aides. He had testified during his confirmation hearings to be secretary of state that he had had nothing to do with the matter, and the implication now was that he had lied during those hearings. At that press conference, Kissinger demanded an investigation to clear his name. On July 30, Haig appeared before Congress to answer questions about his own

moment he had

role in that wiretapping.

Haig knew that

a great deal

was

could be intertwined with Nixon's mittee had the FBI

at stake here,

and that

his fate

—because the House Judiciary Com-

showed Haig's was extremely likely that Haig's role in the wiretaps would be made public and debated. It was just as likely that a Senate trial would involve the Plumbers, and with it expose the Welander interview, the Young report, and the other Moorer-Radford evidence that endangered Haig but had been twice buried. So Haig had a reason to want Nixon to resign rather than to let him be impeached. Actual impeachment was several weeks away, Haig knew, but on July 30 he had to deal with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. By Haig's side, at these hearings, was Fred Buzhardt. Back at the White House, St. Clair and his staff were working frantically to prepare for an appearance in Sirica's courtroom where they were to hand over the first batch of twenty tapes. Buzhardt was the person most familiar with the recordings, and St. Clair's people needed his help but, as Woodward and Bernstein wrote, Buzhardt had dropped everything having to do with the president in order to serve "as unofficial personal files

on the wiretaps,

involvement. Should Nixon go on

trial in

files

that

the Senate,

it

—

counsel to Haig" during the general's three hours of closed-door

testimony on the taps.

was all Kissinger's doing, Haig testified. Before Haig had submitnames to the FBI, he had received general instructions "that they [targeted individuals] be surveilled," and he figured that had included wiretapping, so he sent the names to the appropriate authority, the FBI. Haig testified that he "never viewed myself as anything but an extension of Dr. Kissinger." He was asked if it was true that Kissinger had never been involved in an instruction to tap a specific person. "I do not know that I can say that categorically," Haig responded, and undermined a presumption of Kissinger innocence even further when It

ted

— EXIT THE PRESIDENT

418

he responded to another question by saying, "I never would have submitted a name that I did not get from Dr. Kissinger, or from the president with Dr. Kissinger's knowledge."

The committee

couldn't resolve the testimony of Kissinger and

Haig; in a report issued two months

could not conclude

who had

later,

initiated or

the committee stated that

terminated the taps.

it

The

report cleared Kissinger, though, at least of the allegation that he had

been untruthful during

his confirmation hearings.

At the point that the

committee's report was issued, however. Ford had become president, Kissinger was viewed as the stable rock that enabled the continuity of foreign policy in a time of chaos, and Haig was about to

supreme commander of Kissinger at that

NATO. T)

moment

in

presidency into even greater

become

have impugned either Haig or

time might have submerged the Ford

difficulties.

The Final Days picks up Haig's story after the hearings. In this version, Haig returned to the White House to find that St. Clair had now listened to the tape and had come to the same conclusion as Buzhardt that the president must resign. On July 31, when Buzhardt and St. Clair lobbied Haig to press for Nixon's resignation, Haig reportedly asked, "Should I listen to the tape?" And Buzhardt supposedly said to him, "No, don't listen to any tapes," and instead suggested that a transcript be prepared. Haig then had to go to Nixon for permission to make a transcript. The president initially said no, but Haig argued him into having the transcript made. Next day, August 1, Haig first read a transcript of the June 23 "smoking gun" tape. In this version, it took Haig eight days from the time he learned of the decisive evidence until the

evidence himself. That

How

is

moment he bothered

to study that

unlikely, for the reasons discussed earlier.

could Haig during those eight days strongly disagree with Buz-

hardt's

gloomy assessment of the tape

to look at the evidence?

What

itself if

Haig himself had refused

the eight-day gap did do, however, was

support two linked contentions of The Final Days: that Haig had never listened to the tape at

any

earlier point in time,

and that Haig was not

trying to force Nixon out of office.

For

many

years the Woodward-Bernstein book stood as the accepted

what happened at the end of the Watergate affair. In the we have amassed evidence to support a more factual version from the memoirs of Nixon, Kissinger, Gerald Ford, Ford counselor Robert T Hartmann, and other members of Ford's inner circle, from our interviews with Ron Ziegler and other Nixon aides. version of

following pages,

a

The Real Final Days

419

and from the work of journalists such as J. Anthony Lukas, James Doyle, and Seymour Hersh, who interviewed still other people close

White House at the time. Nixon was torn between resignation and continuing the soon realized, however, that if he lost an impeachment trial, to the

be defeated and dishonored, the

first

fight.

"I

He

would

President in history to be im-

peached and convicted on criminal charges."

When

both Haig and was hopeless, he believed he had to quit, and on August 1 told Haig that he had decided on resignation, and "asked Haig to see Jerry Ford and tell him that I was thinking of resigning, without indicating when." Haig saw Ford, all right, but told him something completely Ziegler separately advised

him

that the situation

different. It is evident that Haig realized Nixon would not call Ford directly, and that Ford, for reasons of propriety, would not call Nixon either stance vice presidents had been taking since 1919, when Vice President Thomas Marshall would not even visit the White House to inquire as

—

to the health of ailing President

Woodrow Wilson,

for fear of being

seen as suggesting that he had any interest in whether Wilson died or

Knowing that there would be no direct communications between Nixon and Ford, Haig played the go-between, and in the coming days withheld information from both men in order to further recovered.

his

T.

own

agenda.

Vice President Gerald Ford's chief of staff at that time was Robert Hartmann, former Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times.

Hartmann writes in his memoir. Palace Politics, that he received a call at home from Haig shortly after 5:30 p.m. on the thirty-first (one day before Nixon told Haig to see Ford). Haig wanted to

visit Ford the next morning, and Hartmann said he'd arrange it. Hartmann apprised Ford, but also suggested to the vice president that he come along as a witness, and Ford consented.

Haig arrived

at Ford's office early

recounted in his

own memoir, A Time

on August 1, 1974, and. Ford to Heal, "seemed surprised" by

Hartmann's presence, "and I had the impression that [Haig] didn't feel he could be as forthright as he might normally have been." Hartmann echoed this thought in his book, saying "it was equally obvious that [Haig] wished I would go away." (Interestingly, the Woodward-Bernaccount agrees that this was the case but has Haig disparaging both Hartmann and Ford, in this incident and throughout the remainder of the book. Ford is painted as naive, and Hartmann is dismissed stein

as a drinker.)

In this August

1

meeting, Haig told Ford that he hadn't seen the

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

420

evidence, but had been told by others that

gun.

When

Ford asked for

details,

it contained the smoking Haig said he couldn't offer more

because the tapes were being transcribed. Strikingly, Haig's claim to Ford that he hadn't seen the "evidence"

by his own statements to Nixon. Nixon reports in his memoirs Haig told him he had read the transcript of the "smoking gun" tape on July 3 1 Nixon wrote that Haig had come to him on the thirtyfirst, said that he'd reviewed the transcript and had to agree with Buzhardt and St. Clair, and had said, "1 just don't see how we can is

belied

that

.

survive this one."

Later in the day on August for another

meeting

—

1,

specifically

Haig

called Ford directly, and asked without Hartmann present. Haig

returned to the vice president's offices at 3:30 p.m. Ford got the

impression that by that time Haig had either seen the transcript or had

been briefed about

it

in considerable detail,

several options available to

because Haig outlined the

Nixon: riding out the impeachment process,

resigning, or pardoning himself along with the other Watergate defen-

dants. (Nixon had told to resign at

Haig

to say to Ford that he

some unspecified time

was probably going

in the future.)

Haig raised the possibility that Nixon's inevitable successor. Ford, could pardon Nixon, in return for Nixon's agreement to leave. "Haig emphasized that these weren't his suggestions," Ford wrote of this meeting, "and he made it very clear that he wasn't recommending any one option over another." (Italics in original.) Haig wanted to know if Ford's assessment of the situation agreed with his, and if Ford had any recommendations to make to the president. Ford writes that he told Haig it would not be proper to make any recommendations; and as Haig left, he told Ford, "We've got to keep in contact. Don't hesitate to call me, and I won't hesitate to call you." This meeting was very important, so we must note that Ford repeated this story, under oath, in sworn testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in October of 1974. In Haig's own testimony in 1981 at confirmation hearings to be secretary of state, Haig denied that he had ever discussed any agreement with Ford in which Nixon would resign in exchange for a pardon. But Haig had taken steps to conceal his second meeting with Ford. An aide to the then-vice president later told reporter Seymour Hersh how the deception had been accomplished. On the afternoon of August 1, Ford was scheduled to meet his wife Betty, and when Ford was late, this aide went to find him. The aide asked the receptionist at the vice president's office if there was a problem, and demanded a look at the appointment book. It said that Secretary of the Interior Rogers Morton Finally,

,

,

.

The Real Final Days was

421

meeting with Ford. "What's he doing here? It wasn't scheduled," the aide asked, and the receptionist told the aide that the person inside was "General Haig, and he made me write Morton in the appointment book." The aide waited. Thirty minutes later, Haig burst out of the room, seemed startled, and asked the aide, "What are you doing here?" Then Haig quickly departed. Hersh later managed to confirm that the appointment book did list Rogers Morton for that inside,

time.

Hartmann's mind as to why Haig held the 3:30 P.M. Ford meeting without him. Hartmann waited a long time in his office for the Haig- Ford meeting to end, and when the vice president called Hartmann in, he gave Hartmann a report, including Haig's options, the last of which was the suggestion that Ford could pardon Nixon. Hartmann later wrote that he was appalled that such a discussion had occurred: " 'Jesus!' I said aloud. To myself: So that's the pitch Haig wouldn't make with me present!" That night. Ford recalled in his memoir, his wife Betty told him that he "shouldn't get involved in making any recommendations at all. Not to Haig, not to Nixon, not to anybody." On the afternoon of August 2, Ford, in the presence of his aides Hartmann, John O. Marsh, Jr., and Bryce Harlow, called Haig and told him, "I have no intention of recommending what the President should do about resigning or not resigning, and that nothing we talked about yesterday afternoon should be given any consideration" by Nixon in making his decision. In his memoir. Ford quoted Haig's reply to this instruction: "You're right." August 2 was a Friday, and that night Nixon met with his family, who urged him to keep fighting that is, not to resign. This bolstered the response Nixon had previously suggested in a note to himself: "End career as a fighter." Nixon decided he would hold off resigning. Instead, on Monday, August 5, he would release the June 23 transcript together with a statement that would put the best face on a bleak situation. He would wait and gauge the public reaction, then, he recalled of his state of mind, "if by some miracle that reaction was not so bad," he might consider hanging on through an impeachment trial. At Camp David that weekend, Haig, Buzhardt, St. Clair, and Pat Buchanan insisted to Nixon that resignation was the only option. St. Clair was angered by learning that Nixon had listened to that June 23 tape on May 6 but had failed to inform him; St. Clair threatened to

There was no doubt

in

—

quit

if

Nixon did not

On Monday

resign.

morning, before the transcript and an accompanying statement were to be released, Haig located Jaworski, who was in Texas on personal business. With St. Clair also on the line, the general told

EXIT THE PRESIDENT

422

Jaworski of the impending release of the June 23 tape, which showed that the president

the

FBI

had had

political

motives in asking the

CIA

to block

investigation of the break-in.

"We didn't know it, Leon," Jaworski later quoted Haig "He [Nixon] didn't tell us about it." After St. Clair had

him.

as telling

explained

Haig continued to assert his nonknowledge: "I'm particularly anxious that you believe me, Leon. ... I didn't know what was in those conversations." Jaworski writes that he accepted the explanation. The reason why Haig wanted Jaworski to "believe" him would come into play a few days later. The statement put out by the president on Monday, accompanying the transcript of the June 23, 1972, conversations, showed him still fighting. Nixon admitted that the new evidence "may further damage my case," but reminded the public that he had always insisted on a full investigation of Watergate, and that "I am firmly convinced that the record, in its entirety, does not justify the extreme step of impeachment and removal of a President." There was an eruption of anger over the transcript. Most people concluded that it was, indeed, the smoking gun, and public opinion moved even more into the column of wanting Richard Nixon out of office. Nixon still wouldn't quit, though. On August 6 and 7 he met with his cabinet and with congressional leaders. He indicated to them that he knew he would be impeached in the House, but believed he had a chance to prevail in the Senate, as had President Andrew his threat to quit,

Johnson, a century

earlier.

Prevailing in the Senate was the subject of a private meeting

Nixon

held with three leading Republicans, Senator Barry Goldwater, Senate

Leader Hugh Scott, and House Minority Leader John Rhodes. Nixon reported the meeting in his autobiography. "It's pretty grim," Scott told Nixon, estimating that the president could count on Minority

only about fifteen solid votes for him in the Senate. "I don't have many alternatives, do I," Nixon responded. He realized that he would have to resign.

Nixon went

to break the

news

—and Al Haig

to his sha)